Thin White Worms (ID)

[Logzor]

I have noticed some thin white worms in my tank. They are slightly thicker than thread and are white with 50% opacity.

They seem to be able to stretch their bodies a long distance and are usually around several others.

Unique behavior:

I noticed two of the while filaments (which I assume to be worms) come out of a rock. The two were working in unison with a piece of snail poop, or some other piece of small matter, between them. The tips their bodies were curled, just after the area with which they were holding the object. They stretched out just over an inch and dropped off the object and moved back in. What the heck are they?

As this point I thought it was some type of starfish, later I noticed more of the same creatures and they did not seem to be connected.

I did not see the tube but I suspect it to be a Chaetopterid.

 

[LeslieH]

The bodies of the worms are hidden away inside their burrows so what you're seeing are feeding tentacles. If the filaments are in sets of two then the most likely suspects are spionid and chaetopterid polychaetes. There are other types with 2 feeding tentacles but these seem to be the most common in tanks. If there were multiple filaments then probably a terebellid polychaete AKA spagetti worm.

 

[MaryK117]

How can you get rid of an overabundance of these type worms. I have the variety that you can definitely see the tubes and I believe there are no more than two filaments coming from them, but they are everywhere to include the sand. My tank looks like someone shedded gray hair into it. Yuck. I pull them out of the sand when I do water changes. I was going to get some nassarius snail and a sand sifting goby in an attempt to get rid of them.

 

[lloydkeller]

ive got them guite afew they dont hurt anything but there are so many there anoying when looking through the bottom up through my tank i can see tjem also