help id this weirdness

Coroner47

New member
I've got a weird creature in my tank. Actually there's 5 on the glass & there appears to be a bunch on the rock. Anyone know what this would be ... a "Bonellia viridis" spoon worm possibly?



I've also got alot of these stringy worms on my rock that stretch out & move with the current. Anyone have an id?

 
So reading up on these hydroids i guess they're a type of jellyfish & they sting. I don't have any corals in my tank. I only have shrimp & crab. Will the hydroids bother them? So far, everyone is getting along.
 
I don't think digitate hydroids spawn jellyfish like some of the others do. I've had 4 kinds over the years, 2 spawned jellyfish & 2 didn't. The digitate I had attached to my zoa frag irritated the crap out of my zoas, but that's about it.
 
Some hydroids that appear in new tanks are sort of evanescent - populations appear and grow, then crash are are never seen again. Digitate hydroids are more tenacious, and IME, tend to spread rapidly. They're all over my FOWLR tank.
 
These digitate hydroids have spread rapidly in 1 month. They look really neat. Would the 1st 2 pictures also be of digitate hydroids or something else?
 
These digitate hydroids have spread rapidly in 1 month. They look really neat. Would the 1st 2 pictures also be of digitate hydroids or something else?
It's possible. I've never seen these guys outside of the live rock, so don't know what the rest of the animal looks like.

Maybe Leslie will stop by and answer.
 
I have. The first 2 are not digitate hydroids like I've ever seen. I had 2 in my refugium and one day they were stuck to a rubberband holding down a piece of macro algae. They were strong and I couldn't pick them off. The next day, they were stuck to individual strands of my chaeto, and I broke off the strands and tossed them. They looked the same all the way down.

Edit:

Try looking here: http://www.chucksaddiction.com/hitchworms.html

Edit 2: Leslie is the one who confirmed my digitate hydroid ID, she's definitely the expert!
 
Thanks for the help & replies! I searched through the link provided & other worm id sites. So far the closest ive found that resembles these guys are Echiura worms. I'll keep an eye on them... maybe they'll turn into something fun in a couple weeks!

Here's a couple pics of the ones attached to the rock.
 
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