How to DESTROY bristleworms ??
 

I HATE these evil little beasts. Simply seeing one wrecks my day. I can't work in a tank if I know there are bristleworms in it. Hence having worms in my tank won't do.

I've seen one or two slithering abouts in my tank at night ,I acted quickly to remove them.

Along with traps ,what can I buy for natural control that won't :

Hurt/bully any of my fish
Hurt any of my coral (zoas ,LPS ,SPS ,'shrooms)
Touch my fire shrimp
Harm snails/crabs


Also don't bother trying to convince me I should just leave them be and let them live in my tank. I know what they do and that they aren't that bad. I hate them ,and won't have them stopping me from working in my tank and wrecking the fun of looking at it.

If you have a visible population, you're probably overfeeding.

Anyway, if you want to trap them, take a small pop bottle, cut off the top and invert it back into the bottle. Secure this with some super glue.

Now throw some sand into the bottom to weigh it down and a piece of food on top of that. Bury this in your sand so that the lip is only 2" or so above the surface. Provide a small rock to act as a ramp. Leave overnight, profit.

Too bad you weren't local, because I would be all over picking up a bunch to seed into my tank :D

right behind you!!

There isn't any visible population :biggrin:

I used marco rock for my tank ,and I try and dip any frag I let into the tank. I find fresh water will kill a bristle within 30 seconds.

However a few have managed to get in with the frags that I didn't dip, so I want to keep something in the tank for the odd worm that manages to escape my preventative measures.

Stop feeding so much and they will disappear. I only have a few and rarely see them over a inch.

To be honest probably your best cleanup crew. I believe there's about 85 known spieces of brissle worm to which most are harmless to our tanks

I've watched my Coral Banded shrimp hunt them...I can't even remember the last time I've actually seen one unless I'm moving a rock.

Sounds like it's going to take a lot more convincing and the aid of a high priced therapist to change this person's opinion on worms :)

I never said I had a bristleworm problem :neutral:

I don't overfeed the tank. The goby and crabs clean up anything not eaten.

I just don't like them and want something in my tank that will eat any that some how manage to get into my tank.

not sure if theres an animal that can guarantee that for you, if you dont want them in there really you should dip everything BEFORE it hits your tank.

if you only have a few, do the trap as albert suggested its the best way to catch them.

you can also fish for them , basically its the same as alberts idea without the bottle, at night take a piece of shrimp , put it in a plastic cliop lay it on the sandbed and go fishing with a pair of tongs everytime one shows his head.

there are fish and shrimps that eat them but they all go for easier food when its available so hit or miss and not many attack the large ones:P

a sump is a great place to keep them if you absolutely do not want them in your display;)

I can lend you a pair of 8" bristle worms :lol: They should out compete the little ones for food no problem

i got a few in my sump that are about 20-24" and 1" thick lol

I think I will have to name my guys when they get that big.

Yeh, sumps are a great place for bristle worms. I had a 3 footer in my sump once. Scared the wife so bad she quit helping. Lol.

Bristleworms give me the creeps ever since a guy told me about the kind that burrow into your arm and then go for your heart. Then he told me I had one on my arm and I have never moved so fast. He started ROFLing and I just about killed him for the bad joke. That was 20 years ago so no one knew too much about bristleworms.

Lol. Awesome joke to play

tonight im going to stick a large 2 footer on the girlfriends pillow lol......anyone have somewhere i can stay for a few days afterwards lol :P:P:P

Doubt you would have a girl after that. Lol

I watch my Christmas wrasse eat them all the time. Usually anything under 2", but then again he seems to eat every invert in sight, except snails and he is pretty big. But I really could care less about having them in the tank. They I've never had them hurt anything.

Anyways good luck killing them all, I don't think there is any possibility of getting rid of them all.

quite a few wrasses will eat smaller ones, alot of other fish try but just end up wih a prickly beard lol :P:P

Lol yeah some of my wrasses have done that before after watching the Christmas wrasse! He is almost 7" so he seems to be able to take most on! Fun to watch him hunting, I'm amazed how quick he finds them.

Even after all this time there are still lots in the tank, pretty much an endless cycle.

imo, its a healthy part of an ecosystem , i believe when you remove things like this you do more harm then good, as bad as it hurts to have the bristles get you, they are 100% beneficial to your tank.

if someone doubts how good they are then overfeed like crazy....the fact that they reproduce very fast in tanks over fed easily means they are consuming the food sources.

fwiw...bristle worms do jobs and get places that no other cuc can get at;)

Yeah I would agree that they are good for the tank.

Get a pair of gloves and work around them if its that big of a deal for you.

If you do trap them and get lots ill come and take them:wink:

But they're icky!!! :razz:

and they taste awful:(

heres something i bet most people dont know , you can actually pick a bristle worm up and not have them stick you , its when you make them mad or scare them they tighten up and push their bristles out.

i caught one a while ago that was floating, i didnt realize it was a bristle worm i actually let it crawl across my hand.....no bristles.

now if i went to pick it up with tweasers or squeezed it or poked it it would have been all over my hand.

drop one on a plate with some water after a few seconds for them to stop being mad their bristles do not stick out like they were.

when you see them move across the rocks they have bristles in neat little bunches , a bristle worm that is mad has a full vest of bristles going in every direction;)


still though...theyre icky and taste bad sooo :P:P

Arrow Crabs eat bristle worms. I had one a while back cleaned most of them out of my tank.

But not all, and that's what she's after, no bristle worms in the tank, period.

Unfortunately there will always be bristleworms in the tank. Always. Waiting....

Do we dare ask how you figured this one out?

Have to be gentle so it doesn't get stuck in throat.

its never a good idea to lay your spaghetti bowl on your bubble traps:mrgreen:

absolutely lol after the first half dozen go down the rest are a breeze:P:P

just plug your nose, close your eyes and chew fast.....then wish to god you were dead lol:twised::twised:

Maybe I can borrow a couple big ones to clean out overflow lines. Scrub scrub

Still my favorite worm..

http://www.oregonreef.com/sub_worm.htm

So gross

Glad to know I'm a girl now...

lol, just figured, with you being all squeamish....ah, nevermind :razz:

'Tis all good :P

I'm fine with pretty much anything else ,just not bristleworms ,peanut worms ,and other nastey little worm like hitchhikers.

Edit : The best thing I could think of to comapare it to is people who are scared of snakes. I love snakes ,own 4 of them ,and think that being scared of snakes is beyond stupid. However there are people that can not even be in a room with snakes ,let alone look at them. Pretty much the same thing with me and bristleworms ,to a lesser scale.

I fear you're chances of having a bristleworm free tank are pretty close to zero. You'll think you got them all, then one night, when you least expect it, you'll see one slithering from on hole of your rock to another. You won't know how it got there, but the chances are good that if you can see even a single one, there are dozens to hundreds more in there that you'll never see. Nothing will ever be able to eat them all once they're in there, because bristleworms are very rarely out in the open where something could eat them. They spend most of their time under/inside rocks, making more and more bristleworms to replace the unlucky few who do get noticed and removed, or eaten by a predator.

Perhaps a little exposure therapy is in order?

Yes