bristle worm, big

pastina · 11-20-2006, 08:35 PM

i was feeding my (huge) coral banded shrimp in my 12g nano cube a shrimp pellet (go figure) and while she was eating under her comfy rock i noticed she backed up with her shrimp pellet. i thought maybe she was choking, then it emerged this this godzilla of a bristle worm so big my CB shrimp was actually afraid! it was hideous and had a head. it was very similiar to a gypsy moth caterpillar about the same size too, unless it was longer god i hope not i only saw an inch of it sticking out of the rock but i can tell by the thickness of it its a monster.
so now what? im not about to catch this thing so its gonna live in a 12g nano until it busts out the sides of the glass so i might as well name it.
how fast do these things grow? it obviously knows food now ( i must have it trained and didnt even know) the only thing i have in there are some mushroom corals, zoa, clarkii clown, snails and several decent sized hermit crabs
all i know is that if a coral banded shrimp is afraid this thing must be bad.
im scared, what if im removing the filter thingy for cleaning and hes on it? its bad enough im afraid of bee's now i gotta have this thing in my tank too

AdamG · 11-20-2006, 08:42 PM

that would freak me out too man. I know they can be good in a reef, but salt water worms just freak me out!

pastina · 11-20-2006, 08:50 PM

ew im gonna have nightmare for sure now
will a small tank stunt its growth? do they molt? i just read they can get up to 24 inches, in a nano i just cant picture that lol

and to think i touched those rocks with my bare little hands

ChrisPrusha · 11-20-2006, 08:56 PM

I have a bunch of them in my 20H. My pistol shrimp just ignores them.

My guess is you don't have too much to worry about...your CBS can handle himself.

Fly Guy · 11-20-2006, 08:57 PM

If they have the food source they can get huge in any size tank. Your shrimp are perfectly safe unless they die, then the worm will clean them up for you.

pastina · 11-20-2006, 09:03 PM

oh it def has a food source. i feed the cb and the hermits so he must be getting some of that. i sometimes feed right before i shut the lights, i wont dare myself to peak just in case this things like a foot long lol

i thought cb's eat bristle worms? is it only small worms that they can handle?

jph · 11-20-2006, 09:09 PM

keep feeding it, and you may end up with one of these

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

J.

Geoff · 11-20-2006, 09:15 PM

actually that brings up a good point. what colour was the bristleworms head? was it the normal bristleworm colour? if not than you may have a Euclid worm. have you noticed any shrooms missing?

G~