Ouch!

[Coffman34]

I am not for sure if mine is a fire or just normal bristle worm. I have not found any good comparable pics to look at. Can anyone tell me what that one is in the pic above? I haven't seen them hurt anything yet, but I do suspect my pods of eating my beautiful frag of Green Bay Packer zoas.

Coffman

 

[hyperfocal]

It's been my experience that some people use "fire worm" to describe coral-eating polychaetes, and "bristleworm" when they mean detritus-eating polychaetes. Thus, fire worms are bad, and bristleworms are good. It's all just colloquial...

 

[melev]

Fireworms very rarely make it into our tanks, period. Dr Ron Shimek has stated that the odds are very low, something like 95% of the worms we see are nothing to worry about.

 

[mystrybird]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10971910#post10971910 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Fireworms very rarely make it into our tanks, period. Dr Ron Shimek has stated that the odds are very low, something like 95% of the worms we see are nothing to worry about.

So what worm do I have? I know my picture is bad and I have not figured out how to resize without losing quality. But this looks nothing like the bristles I usually find in my tanks. The color in the picture is also not the same as what it was. I have another critter I am dying to ID that was "baby pink" but looks orange in the picture. This looks the same as the worms ID as Fireworm on
Dr Ron Shimek site.

But I have bigger worries than and ID for the worm. I don't think I am supposed to have zoanthid eating spiders in my tank either. I have gotten more nasty's from some rock I purchased from a LSF last month than I have ever seen since being in the salt habit. (yes I said habit) The rock was cheap but an awesome purple. I am beginning to realize why it might have been such a bargain!

BTW melev, I purchased one of your RO/DI units some time ago. Do you still sell them? I am working on building a new tank on a different floor and I will need a second RO/DI unit.

 

[luke33]

All the pics above except for tim's are supposed "fire worms" but i'm wondering if thats just what people call them common name wise. IME i've never had problems with them ever eating corals, only snails when they are larger than 6"

 

[melev]

If you take your pictures and were to show them to Dr Ron in his forum on Marine Depot, and if you had enough of the animal in the picture for him to ID it, I have a feeling he wouldn't call it a fire worm. I could be wrong, but when he used to have a forum here on RC, he spent a lot of time telling people they had bristleworms.

LeslieH is another worm person here on RC, and she might be able to chime in. She'll mention something about 40,000 worms in hobby, no doubt. :lol:

I have some tiny swimming worms that appeared in my reef some time back, and they looked like this:

Video of the worms: http://www.melevsreef.com/video/afterdark.wmv

Discussion of those worms:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=3144371#post3144371

The zoanthid eating spiders are a pain to deal with. You mainly have to pluck them off as you see them. If you quarantine all of your zoanthids, you'll do it for 3 to 6 months. And during that time, your job is to find every spider and tweezer them out of the system until you see no more for a long time. The spiders like to plant their eggs inside a zoanthid's polyp, and when these 'hatch' can take some time.

Discussion about spiders:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=3818011#post3818011

Sending you a PM about your other question, as I'm no longer a sponsor here on RC.

 

[mystrybird]

That last picture just made me realize what the strange growth on one of the Z's was... (the one with the spider over the mouth) I ran to find it..

 

[jeffbrig]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10972720#post10972720 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mystrybird
So what worm do I have?

Your worm is a fairly common and harmless bristleworm. IMO, "bristleworm" and "fireworm" are two common names for the same group of worms. The bristles burn when you get into them. Some people call them bristleworms, others call them fireworms.

The known coral-eating bristle/fireworm is Hermodice carunculata (if I spelled that right), and it is not terribly common, although a few people have dealt with it.

Another slightly different worm is the Eunicid family, like the big nasty that Steve Weast had in the oregonreef link above. I've also had firsthand experience with this one, and I can comform that they do eat softies, lps, zoanthids, and palys. One telltale sign of these is that they leave short mucus tunnels between rocks when they move around the tank. I was very relieved to get this thing out of my tank. Mine was perhaps 24" in length.

 

[techreef]

Jeff, how did you capture your eunicid? I've got several in my tank. They're all small, like 1mm in diameter, but they've got the 5 antennae of eunicids, and they can retract into their holes like lightning. They're so fast that I have no chance of grabbing them w/ anything. Did you set a trap in your tank? I don't notice any coral death other than some hitchhiking cup corals in my tank, but I'm worried about having eunicids in my tank, esp once they grow larger.

 

[jeffbrig]

I started pulling rock whenever I saw a eunicid worm retract into a hole. Then I put the rock in a bucket and squirted San Pellegrino (a carbonated water) into every hole. Carbonated drinks tend to be very acidic, some soft drinks have a pH as low as 2 or 3. When you squirt this into the holes, all sorts of things start bailing out, including these worms. You can't really pull on them, they will tear/break easily.

If you don't succeed in getting the worms immediately, leave the rock in a bucket of water with a small powerhead. I had a few that didn't come out immediately, but left the rock overnight. In short, don't put the rock back in the tank until you're sure you got the worm out.