Holy Bristleworms!!!
 

I have been growing this ball of algae, now about the size of a softball and tonight I was in a hurry to feed, so I chopped the Mysis shrimp up to be able to feed with the turkey baster. Got a little sloppy and sprayed some on the algae. All of a sudden there was at least half a dozen Bristleworms coming to the surface of the algae to eat. I guess they are living inside it.

Really not sure what to do here. How many worms is too many? Should I keep this algae? Don't have a sump yet, so I cannot put it there.

Sorry for all the floaters in the water, but turned all the pumps on at once after I fed.
http://www.canreef.com/photopost/data/500/Worms.jpg

You will always have as many bristle worms as needed to clean up excess food. If you feed too much then you will have lots of worms.
They are great detrivores and as far as i'm concerned a necessary part of any clean up crew.


*edit* I hope that algae isn't the same as this stuff
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...02brad0010.jpg
you may regret having it in the display tank

You wanna see bisttle worms? Heres a 6" X 6" area of my refugium.

If anyone wants to ship some to me, I don't have enough!!

No kidding I could use a few.:biggrin:

Thank you for your responses. I'll keep breeding them and when it's time to cull a few, I'll let you know.

Too bad you guys didn't live closer, when we cleaned out the detritus from our sump and cleaned out our skimmer we found tons of them.

my wife found one in the display in the middle of the night that she said was as thick as her finger and about 3 feet long!

I aint got any either. But if they grow 3' long?? Do I really want any? Detritus building up on the sand, need something to take care of it??

Sadly, when there's no excess food, they'll eat other stuff. Some of my rocks where I use to have lots of zoos and ricordia are now bare. I saw them eat the zoos and ricordia at night. I hardly feed my tank anymore, and cut back on my livestock, but the worm population has not decreased.