Baby Bristleworm Eradication

[drcole]

My tank has been running for 4 months and I am just now really seeing it come to life at night. I have these small worms that I have been trying to remove to the best of my ability at night, but I am losing the battle. I can only assume that they are juvenile bristleworms. Does anyone have experience with a fish that may pick at these and eat them off of the glass?? I hope to add a mandarin soon and was curious if it may pick at these...thanks in advance

 

[stanleo]

Why do you want to get rid of them? They are an excellent clean up crew member. But I know they are ugly. A 6 line wrasse might go after them. I say might cause some do some won't, same with most wrasses. If they are bristleworms, they get too big for mandarins. They like the microfauna to eat. But I suspect what you have are dorvilleidae. They stay tiny and they too are a good CUC member. Again, any wrasse MIGHT go after them. But even if they do, you will never get rid of them fully. You can control the numbers by careful feeding and manual removal or even getting a wrasse might help, but they are in your tank to stay.

 

[Shinister]

I used to have tons of these worms come out during lights out. Ever since I added a diamond goby, they've all disappeared. I never seen the goby eat them but it does sift through the sand. I liked having them around though since they cleaned up all the large, unbroken poop that landed in the crevices.

 

[living_tribunal]

My tank has been running for 4 months and I am just now really seeing it come to life at night. I have these small worms that I have been trying to remove to the best of my ability at night, but I am losing the battle. I can only assume that they are juvenile bristleworms. Does anyone have experience with a fish that may pick at these and eat them off of the glass?? I hope to add a mandarin soon and was curious if it may pick at these...thanks in advance

Not sure why you would want to get rid of them? Baby bristles are fantastic to have. They only reproduce to the detritus and excess nutrient levels of the tank, aren’t invasive, and are highly effective at enhancing the anaerobic and cleanliness of your sand bed and even rock work.

I just added several to mine and love them.

 

[Lovemyreef2015]

Please don't add any fish to your tank just yet because depending on the size of your tank some fish wouldn't be a good idea to add. I would get a picture of the worms in question. It sounds like either bristleworms or a type of dorvilleidae worm. Both are good to have in you tank.

 

[DSC reef]

At 4 months old your tank has barely scratched the surface of biodiversity. Why would you want to wipe out the very foundation of what a saltwater tank is built on? If worms or tiny creatures freak you out then I would not look at the tank at night. Try to post pics of what you see and IMO, it would be a bad idea to start adding livestock to eliminate something beneficial to your tank.

 

[living_tribunal]

At 4 months old your tank has barely scratched the surface of biodiversity. Why would you want to wipe out the very foundation of what a saltwater tank is built on? If worms or tiny creatures freak you out then I would not look at the tank at night.

Or go to ipsf for that matter haha!

 

[DSC reef]

I used to have tons of these worms come out during lights out. Ever since I added a diamond goby, they've all disappeared. I never seen the goby eat them but it does sift through the sand. I liked having them around though since they cleaned up all the large, unbroken poop that landed in the crevices.

Most likely the diamond goby eliminated the food source of the bristleworms and thinned down the population. Bristleworms worms are scavengers and as much as the goby sifts, there isn't a lot of detritus to eat after for the worms. I doubt the goby actually ate them.

 

[DSC reef]

Or go to ipsf for that matter haha!

Ok, I'm trying to figure out what that stands for, help me out

 

[living_tribunal]

Ok, I'm trying to figure out what that stands for, help me out

My absolute favorite site to get cuc members. They have the best packages that are setup brilliantly geared towards reproduction, interoperability (no conflicting species that kill each other), and cohesion to cover all clean up needs from detritus, all algae types, all waste types, etc. They also breed them in fishless systems to make sure they don’t come with disease.

I love their baby brittle mini stars.

Check them out here: https://www.ipsf.com/podbreedingkit.html

 

[DSC reef]

Thank you @living_tribunal

 

[living_tribunal]

Thank you @living_tribunal

You got it! They also have a diverse array of bacteria, macro fauna, and pod types. Basically will make a new tank into a 2 year old one in terms of biodiversity

 

[living_tribunal]

@drcole if you really must remove them then you can drop a pink face wrasse in there , he should get rid of almost all your inverts

 

[drcole]

@drcole if you really must remove them then you can drop a pink face wrasse in there , he should get rid of almost all your inverts

I guess I just assumed they were a bad thing. After hearing the responses, these little guys are going to now be safe. I do believe the are dorvilleidae. That's why I post here, to learn and get the responses. I am still going to go for the mandarin though, have my heart set on that guy.

 

[living_tribunal]

I guess I just assumed they were a bad thing. After hearing the responses, these little guys are going to now be safe. I do believe the are dorvilleidae. That's why I post here, to learn and get the responses. I am still going to go for the mandarin though, have my heart set on that guy.

These guys pose no threat to him. Before you get the mandarin though, how large is your tank? Do you have a nice sized fuge? How are you cultivating/sourcing pods?

 

[DSC reef]

I guess I just assumed they were a bad thing. After hearing the responses, these little guys are going to now be safe. I do believe the are dorvilleidae. That's why I post here, to learn and get the responses. I am still going to go for the mandarin though, have my heart set on that guy.

We are all happy to help. I would wait until your tank is matured, minunm a year, better if you wait longer. They also do much better in larger tanks, 75+ gallons. They are great fish as I've always had one but it needs to eat multiple times a day. It was actually work keeping one but worth it.

 

[living_tribunal]

We are all happy to help. I would wait until your tank is matured, minunm a year, better if you wait longer. They also do much better in larger tanks, 75+ gallons. They are great fish as I've always had one but it needs to eat multiple times a day. It was actually work keeping one but worth it.

Especially with smaller tanks. You can no doubt get one with a 30-50g tank but you better have a nice cultivation setup spitting out a 1,000 pods a day.

Not many people are diligent enough to sustain that :/

 

[DSC reef]

Especially with smaller tanks. You can no doubt get one with a 30-50g tank but you better have a nice cultivation setup spitting out a 1,000 pods a day.

Not many people are diligent enough to sustain that :/

Agreed, even though my wife fed the mandarin 4 times during the day, mixture of LRS frozen, reef nutrition ROE, and TDO chroma boost, still had to supplement pods monthly/bi-monthly. He was beautiful

 

[living_tribunal]

Agreed, even though my wife fed the mandarin 4 times during the day, mixture of LRS frozen, reef nutrition ROE, and TDO chroma boost, still had to supplement pods monthly/bi-monthly. He was beautiful

Looks nice and fat to me! Do you still have him?

 

[DSC reef]

Looks nice and fat to me! Do you still have him?

Unfortunately no, gave him to a friend among other fish. That 75 gallon was taken down when we bought a new house and had our son. The mandarin now resides in a 365 gallon paradise. We will have another one day. Had that mandarin from a baby, between 8-10 years if I can remember correctly. He ate out of the same corner every day.