Yellow Dendro-eating Worm

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Thought I might be able to get a possible ID or at least someone to give me an idea of what I'm dealing with. For the past week or so, I've noticed a sudden and rapid decline of my Dendrophyllia colony. The tissue surrounding the polyps started to look chewed and, while the polyps still would open for much of the day, there was a clear problem. A few days ago, one of the polyps completely sheared off. Around the same time as I started noticing this issue, I also started seeing small fluffy spots on the dendros, about 3mm in diameter. I've seen more and more of them pop up, correlating with the decline of the dendros. So, it seemed pretty likely that these buggers are to blame.

Having access to a good microscope, I decided to get a closer look at these things. So, I sucked up a bunch of them and took some photos of them at 100x. Before I did this, I thought they might be some sort of small nudibranch. However, it turns out from the photos that they are in fact small worms, about 1mm in length. What I had thought to be individuals turned out to be colonies of these guys. Here are some photos:

It's a bit hard to tell from these images, but these guys are a school-bus yellow. Does anyone know what they might be?

 

[Micromussa]

Most people have problems id'ing little buggers because they cant a close enough pic of it. You my friend, took the pic wayyy too close lol. Sorry i cant help much

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Yeah, I know the photos are a bit blurry and perhaps a tad too close. The problem is that they were squirming around a lot, so it was hard to get a good shot. Plus, I was imaging at the lowest magnification, so my options are either too close-up (microscope) or too far away (digital camera)... I'm going to try to get some better photos tomorrow. I have them preserved in formaldehyde right now.