Worm ID on chaeto

[Narideth]

Howdy all, I got some free chaeto from a store that I've frequented a couple of times now, good frags, good prices, but I knew I'd have to inspect it pretty thoroughly for bad hitchhikers and I'm still considering buying clean chaeto to set up my little in tank refugium.

Well there are several of these little fan worms, but the only fan worms I can seem to find reference to all have hard shells - these are just sort of curled and wiggling about in the chaeto ball. The ball looks pretty clean, and I'm mostly concerned about aptasia, but these little wigglers seem to be the most prevalent critter I've caught sight of so far. There's a few other things attached to the chaeto that I'm working to video/photo and ID.

Is it worth it to simply purchase clean chaeto? I'm 100% down for that but it feels bad to dump this well-meaning gift.

 

[lucyretz]

this looks to be a feather duster worm whos just come out of his tube. just a harmless filter feeder.

 

[Fish Styx]

+1 feather duster. Bonus.

 

[Narideth]

All of them look like this though, or most of them anyway. Is it common for so many of them to wiggle out of their shells at once? I saw 3-4 at least on a cursory inspection, and at least one that was attached to a bit of chaeto.

 

[Cthulukelele]

They often can bail out during stress events. If their tank is littered not a crazy number

 

[lucyretz]

not uncommon to have a lot of feather dusters where cheato is kept, i know my sump is full of them! they are super neat to watch, i would consider a few of them coming in on your cheato to be a bonus

 

[Narideth]

Delightful! The one that was still attached and in its shell reacted as I expect fan worms to do - it retracted immediately upon being touched or moved, but these others had me stumped. Thanks everyone for the input!