I.D. please.

[Guest alex wlazlak]

i was lookin around and saw this thing, it changed colors from red to a whiteish color...ithad like 12 (?) legs on each side of it..probly only a centimeter long, and like 2 mm wide.(<the first 2 pictures) then i saw this worm type thing, probly littler then a m.m. wide and about 2

[dbartco]

Just a type of bristleworm Alex. Will come out with the lights off. Not a real concern unless they get to plague proportions, and not too large (8" would be too large for my liking). Just don't pull them out with your bare hands.

[Guest alex wlazlak]

were you talking about the first two pics. or the last one? i had some worms like 4-6 inches long before and hated them, pulled them out with a algea clip, and they smelled horrible!the first two looked like a type of slug in a way, i was just lookin on google..but if the last one is a bristleworm then im taken it out.hate em' just hate em'!

[Guest Keyoke]

I've got a ton of bristles.. a few are good. they eat poo, dead things, food that gets stuck in dead zones, etc. The ones that you gotta worry about are 'fireworms' which look like bristles but are flame-read from tip-to-tail (not that you can tell what end is what) - there are a few that are bad for clams too, you can tell if ya got them by lookin at the base of your clam to see if there's any holes in the shell. The worms'll drill in and eat the clam from the inside out..

 

I've got a few monsters, there's a foot long one in my tank somewhere, every time I see 'im by the time I get a camera the thing is gone.. Got a few that look like the mouth parts of a Conch too, not sure what those things are. Big beasties.

 

The stuff in the 3rd pic, those look like the tentacles of a spaghetti worm or sometin similar. Usually you can see 'im in the substrate - they build teeny little .. volcanoes out of the sand and toss their feeler/mouth parts out. The feeler things are sticky, and they drag them along sand, rock, etc and pickup microbes and algal matter which they drag back to their burrow and feed on. Totally harmless.

[Guest alex wlazlak]

so what do the fireworms do??i got a picture of what mine look like, i was just looking in the tank with the lights off at 10:30 p.m. and i saw 2 of them, both looking like the one in the picture, but the mid section wasn't as dark.the tittle said it was a faq bristle whatever that is..

[xeon]

Alex,

That is your garden variety bristle worm, otherwise known as a harmless, yet beneficial detrivore. If they get huge, I tend to want to remove them. IMO, they can also be opportunistic omnivores and increased size may change their "feeding habits". Fireworms are reddish/orange from tip to tip.

 

Keyoke,

Your large beasts... could they be peanut worms? Peanut worms tend to feed at night from a hole in the rocks. (or at least mine do) They look like a conch's "trunk" moving around picking stuff off of the rock.

[Guest alex wlazlak]

i think i had those peanut things too, but got rid of em' asap..just didnt like them and they smelled like $hit.

[Guest alex wlazlak]

i just got a cool picture to show, no real reason, but i thought it was pretty neat..my rock bleenie in the featherduster.