Sea horses and bristle worms

[Gordonious]

I know a couple of you have kept sea horses before and I wanted to get your opinions on the presence of bristle worms in their system. I know a great deal of the sea horses offered can not handle reef temperatures, but in the future I would like to add a couple to a low flow, low light tank connected to the main system. One of the tanks I have now has gone fishless for a while and actually right now only has live rock, red mushrooms, and tiny inverts.(pods,worms,and such)

Should I be cautious and start using traps and things to reduce their populations now? Or let the bristle worms just stir up the sand bed and take care of the dead stuff?

Jonathon

 

[crazy4salt]

I kept seahorses, there were bristleworms in the tank and they never bothered the horses. I'm not sure how many you have, if it's overrun I would probably try to trap a good portion first. But if they are within normal proportions I personally wouldn't worry about them.

 

[Gordonious]

That's the thing, and I was about to post this as well, the nano I have set up is over run with the worms and amphlapods(I've always been a horrible speller) about 1mm in size. I have a feeling there is the copepod population is being kept down dramatically. The only ones that are surviving are those that keep high on an algae filled wall. I have enough large pods to make a starving mandarin fat, lol.

I suppose it is time to build or buy traps.

 

[GROSSR]

If you want to give some of the pods away I will take some. I will be in DE the week of 12/11 and 12.

rich

 

[Gordonious]

Sorry Rich that's actually the same time as my Mom's birthday so if I'm not in an exam at that time I may be down in Sussex county. The pods actually I want. I'm happy I'm starting to get over run with the little buggers because everything I want requires them. Dragonets, Mandarins, Sea horses. I still am not ready to buy any of them though because I need to get the tanks connected and a little more LR so my population can stay as high as it is.

The worms on the other hand I would love to get rid of. If anyone would like some of them they are welcome. They can be great sand sifters and rock cleaners. I just want to shrink the population before I get any sea horses.

 

[kaptken]

that there are a lot of pods and bristles says that there is plenty of work for them to do cleaning up waste. otherwise there wouldn't be so many. I dont think the bristles will bother any future fish or sea horses. or look tempting for them, unless of course, they are a good food for them. I would let them be and they will adjust their own numbers and size ie. total bio mass to the load of the tank. they are good scavengers. mine come and go depending on the food supply.

Diversity is stability.

 

[Gordonious]

Two over abundant predators present because of a few inverts that passed won't help the diversity. As far as I can see there is only one species of worm and pods that have took off and now that their isn't the extra food to take care of all they have to eat is the pods.
They've reached and passed their carrying capacity with the help of the extra food and I fear a boom and bust situation. (this is all going on in my Nano which is currently separate from my large system which has very few worms and large pods.