Help - Spawning Bristleworms!!

[reefallen]

PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!! We're desperate!!!!

We have a MASSIVE popultation of bristworms!! I've been throwing hundreds away several times a week (something I usually never would consider, but I'm getting desperate!!!)

Our bristleworms are having "spawning sessions" daily, sometimes more than once a day! Their "sperm" (or so I'm told) is clouding up the tank and my population is OUT OF CONTROL!!! It is attacking LIVE corals and killing them!! It has killed my clam, too! It's working on my 2 RBTA!!!

PLEASE help!! I've tried the bottle trap... no food left, but NO WORMS!!! I'm really getting scared! I'm going to try the pantyhose trick tonight.

What do I do?? My fish are FREAKING out every time they let their white streams out! The whole tank becomes so cloudy you can't even see the back and it takes HOURS (sometimes half a day) to clear. The fish become agitated and swim erratically. I'm concerned that my whole tank will crash.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!!

 

[reefallen]

BUMP!!

PLEASE HELP!!! Nothing is working!!!!

 

[LeslieH]

Mary, I'm not sure there's much you can do besides taking drastic measures. I'm really sorry - I'm sure you don't want to hear this. With that many visible bristle worms & constant reproduction there will be l000s of tiny hungry juveniles. You could remove all the valuable critters & fish temporarily then borrow every 6-line, arrow crab, etc. that you can until the main population goes down & hope it doesn't come back up. Or you can break down the tank, individually dip all the rocks, screen all the sand (if you have a SB), re-install. Afterwards keep feeding to a minimum and constantly vacuum to be sure there's no detritus & poop building up.

 

[mastou]

Well I don't know if it will help you, but the spawning it self will probably not do any damage, I also had massive spawning over a couple of weeks and it didn't do any harm at all.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1059904

Are your worms similar to mine? and is it your worms that attack your corals, clams and RBTA?

/Magnus

 

[Springmo]

Also, if you cut back on how much you feed the tank, the bristleworm population should gradually correct itself.