Bristle worms

[Samw]

Here are some images of my worms. I used large frozen prawns as bait to attract them and then use aquatongs to catch the worms. Sometimes, I have to grab the prawn with the aquatongs because the worms would start carrying it into their cave. Then it becomes a little tug of war. I was surprised by the strength of their jaws.



I spent 3 separate nights catching the worms. This bucket of worms represents 1 night's catch and is maybe 10% or less of the worms in my 38G tank. I still have lots of worms but hopefully they have less competition amongst each other for food now.




In this night time shot, a couple of worms are eating some green zoanthids that were open during the day. The worms are hungry. Within a minute or so, the polyp where the worm's mouth was is gone and only bare rock is left where the polyp once was. I have already lost hundreds of orange eagle eye zoanthids and all of my pink zoanthids. The polyps would be opened during the day and then the next day, a whole bunch would disappear and the same repeated night by night.



Here, my poor Sharknose goby has bristleworm spikes embedded along its entire body including its mouth. It looked like it was going to die but it recovered and survived.