Star Polyps dead!

Raffm22

New member
I noticed my star polyps wither away for about a month now. I took the rock out which they covered and noticed some type of bristle worms under the old skin of the polyps. They were a few there. I'm wondering if these types of worms killed my coral. Any input would be great thanks!
 
Do you have a pic of the worms? Star polyps are hardy so to kill them there must be something very wrong going on in the tank
 
Other than the polyps tank is doing good. I have mushrooms,zoanthids,flower pots,frog spawns, 3 different anemones(rose,purple and long tentacle), bubble coral and all my 30 fish along with my shrimps,crabs and snails all doing great. That is why I'm suspecting the worms. Like I said when I inspected the rock it literally looked like the polyps were eaten from inside out. The worms were right under the skin of polyps. I didn't take a picture but they looked like bristle worms that had a head with a big sucker mouth and whiskers. All water parameters are in check as well.
 
If they were bristleworms then they were probably doing what they were supposed to be doing, cleaning up the tank. The polyps died and the cleaners of waste in the tank went to work.

But you may need that picture, since that description doesn't sound like a bristleworm. If it were something like a eunicid worm, then it could be bad.
 
Actually... now that I'm looking at images for eunicid worm. that is what it looked like.. Had a bristle worm type body but the head had whiskers like the pics! Any info on these worms?
 
Depends on the species really.

But potential alone makes them sort of the boogeymen of the reef tank. Grow to huge sizes (by worm standards), amazing hiders, eat whatever they want, regenerates from a piece that breaks off when trying to rip them out of the tank. Not the best things to deal with.

For more information head over to the Other Invertebrate forum. Many people over there with way too much information on such life forms. LeslieH would probably be a good start on people to talk too about worms in general.
 
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