bristleworms are no longer welcome.
 

i dont care how beneficial you think these guys are...they must go!

hehe, atleast the fat sucker who left all his bristles in my finger!

the bad part of it is, the bristles are kinda brittle, so if you try to pluck them out to aggressively, they snap and leave little shards in your skin!

ouch! :evil:

Wimp... :razz: :lol:

Try blistered fingers and reactine for a while....gotta love those guys.... :mrgreen:

try soaking your hand in vinegar, should disolve the bristles

Man, I hear ya. After I took down a 5" DSB in my old tank is felt like I gave a stinging nettle an indian burn! :lol: Not a fun experience. Too bad I didn't know the vinager trick, doh!

i knew ssomeone would know a cool remedy!
thanks troy.

Shao, for future reference, don't play with bristleworms...leave them in the sand!!

Re: bristleworms are no longer welcome.
 

Was rearranging the rock in our 7 gal today to make the tank ready for the seahorse we're about to buy. While I knew we had a large bristleworm in there, didn't know how large until I found its hiding place under one particular rock. It was freakin' HUGE :exclaim: :exclaim:

I decided to let the creature be as it has never hurt anything in that tank in over 7 months, so I doubt it'll harm anything in the future. Plus, I didn't want to get into any kind of tug of war with it. I'm sure it would have won by stinging me with its bristles, but I'd have then killed a useful hitchhiker for no good reason.

Now if it was a mithrax crab, well, that'd be another story completely :evil:

Bristleworms are good for your reef, so leave alone, please :neutral:

I think shao was kidding! :lol:

Re: bristleworms are no longer welcome.
 

You are of course welcome to your feelings, but they are my worms, and I will treat them as I please, please. :razz:

As I have said in another thread, I would normally leave them be, but my 20G reef has too many. I used to shine a light in there after dark, and was disgusted with the sheer numbers. There were at least 100 of them. In my 50 I never see any. The difference was I have two big fat Cleaner Shrimp in there. The shrimp either eat them, or scare them so they stay in the sand where they belong. To make a short story long, I picked up a couple of small shrimp for $15.00 each, which I think is reasonable. Now when I shine a light in there I see far fewer worms.
:smilecol: :rainbowa:

Re: bristleworms are no longer welcome.
 

Bob, that is good and it is a sign of a tank that will handle a fish dieing with no problems as the worms will consume it befor it can do any dammage.

you know.. I have 2 cleaner shrimp and 3 peppermint shrimp in my 94 gal, I have seen them all eat worms but I still have hundreds of worms at night (or if I feed the tank) the difference being I ran the tank for about 3 months and encouraged worm growth befor I put the shrimp in.. I agree that the shrimp eat the worms but I do not thing that they could wipe out a large established worm stock with only 2.. I think it is more likely that you put the shrimp in befor the worms were established.

just for the record I can put some fish food in my tank and with in 3 min I cannot count the amount of worms that appear.. but any other time you have to look rather hard to find one.. I have also put a large oyster (bought from the store) in the tank and the next morning the shell was clean and I have never been able to detect any nitrates or anthing.. as a cleaner/scavanger I don't think anything will compare to the efficiency of bristle worms and unless you have one of the preditory types (which are very very rare in home aquaria) there growth should be encouraged.

Bob, I know you will type some smart a$$ reply to this as you think the world would be a better place with out my opinions so ignore it as this is for other people that might be interested in moderen ideas/methodology not the ideas that were good in the 60's :rolleyes:

Oh I hid a few spelling mistakes in here see how long it takes you to find them.

Steve

Re: bristleworms are no longer welcome.
 

Wrong again, I have no problem with valid opinions, just dumb ones (my opinion of course}. The point being is that I never answer a post unless I have experience in the subject. I never answer a post just because it is there. I have no problem with spelling errors, if you have no pride in what you write, it is entirely up to you. I prefer to come across as a person with a modicum of intelligence. After 62 years on this earth that is my view FWIW :microwav: . As far as the 50 is concerned, the Cleaners have always been there, and I did at one time to see Bristleworms after lights out. It is noticable that there are less worms in view in the 20 now that the little Cleaners are in there. I just like that better, as to my tastes there were too many. It really looked disgusting after lights out. That is just my taste, perhaps it was healthy. Just as an aside those little cleaners could not have eaten those big worms. I think they just scared them. :smilecol: :silly:

Gotta disagree with ya, Steve. My tank had tons of worms for a year before I added shrimp. Within a month I could not find a worm, day or night. I still have worm tracks in the sand, but not a single bristle worm living in or around the rocks.

which tank Brad? it seams weird as i watch mine slice and dice worms all the time but I am at no shortage or worms.. Almost makes me wonder if you have some other "worm preditor" in your tank.

Steve

Mee too. I used to feed and they would come out of everywhere. Now I have to search to find them.

I have no cleaners in my tank this time around...because they're greedy little hogs that eat everything they can get there pincers on. Absolute pigs. I think they're detrimental to sand bed and rock fauna/infauna.

I will certainly agree on the greed thing, but as to being detrimental I am not sure. Even though iI appear to have no Bristleworms in the 50, there are other worms. The difference is that these guys stay in the sandbed, and I have yet to see cleaners dig. :Fade-col:

I agree they're detrimental. And I can't figure out why I put one in my tank knowing that. Trap building time again!! :biggrin:

well i wouldnt go so far as to say they are detrimental, but i would agree that they greedy eaters.

i see where you guys are going with this though, detrimental in that they prey upon and may inhibit/control/eradicate the growth of certain microfauna. may prevent very delicate, finicky, shy feeders from feeding enough.

but, i really like the look of the skunk cleaner, and it is a very interesting creature. i will still keep them in my tanks, especially since i believe they provide a good service of cleaning larger fish.

alas, at the end of the reefing day, it's all about trade-offs.

so i choose shrimp over an increase of microfauna diversity.
its like the same decision you make if you want to keep the smaller sp. of wrasse. they too will impact the amount of critters in a tank.

on a side note, i really enjoy seeing the different fauna found in a system that has no predators like, small wrasse, shrimp and dragonettes.

neato. :mrgreen: