Bristle Worms...Good or Bad?

[daniella3d]

Last week I toutched some large one twice. I had thousands of bristles in 3 of my fingers including my thumb. I used LiquidSkin and it literaly melt them in like 10 to 15 minutes or less, then you just peel the dry liquidskin off and put another layer of fresh liquidskin.

I have also read that soaking in vinegar melt them. It's not that bad. I did not have any iching or redness.

I would be wary of them if you have clams as they might enter a clam and hurt it, but I keep mine as they are part of a precious cleaning up crew. I even feed mine so that I keep them alive. I see them sometime craw in my zoanthids and thinking that the bristles will damage the zoanthids but it has not hapened yet.

I have a flame scallop in a 21 gallons with many very large bristle worms and it's been there for 10 months and it is doing very well, so I guess the large bristle worms does not bother it.

The thing is, I feed that tank a lot because I have non-photosynthetic in there and the scallop, so the cleaning up crew is very important to the equilibrum of my setup.

I don,t think they can even bite, at least they cannot take a bite out of a living seahorse, probably some other predatory type of worm.

Originally Posted by MrGoodbytes

Bristleworms are great! Just don't get them near your skin :P. I'd definitely keep them. I have several small ones in my 20L and recently found a larger one of a different species munching on stuff but it's just harmless grazing. When you add them to your 100, you can expect they'll keep the sand stirred up and oxygenated. They'll also help keep things clean.

[untamed]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I don,t think they can even bite, at least they cannot take a bite out of a living seahorse, probably some other predatory type of worm.

That is what I was thinking. I have had fire worms, which look VERY similiar to the avg. bristle worms..but they eat SPS. However, in order to eat the SPS they have to gum it for hours or days at a time. When they do this, it is obvious that the fireworm has latched onto the coral and you can just grab it with tweezers and pull it off.