worms???

[nycreef]

i just looked in my new tank of live rocks and live sand last night.i saw these little white tiny worms floating and hiding in the rocks. what are the and are they dangerous.if they are ,what natural way is there to get rid of them. i have no corals or fish yet.the tank is three days new.

[Alice]

There are a lot of things that look like worms that can be floating around in your tank....and there are a lot of different worms.

Do these look alive or dead? (I ask because if your rock was uncured and really stinky, there's a chance they could be maggots...gross, I know, but sometimes rock sits out on the beach during collection, and well....) If they're alive, it's more than likely some type of amphipod or copepod and almost all of those are welcome in your tank.

Hehe kinda kills me when us as educated humans wanna kill everything we do not understand. NYC leave the worms alone. Be happy you have them. There are some species of worms which are somewhat of a danger to reef tanks. Ron Skimick has a few articles on the subject. I personal have had the worms that are known to eat snails. I forget the exact scientific name i just know them by discribtion and for my case they really did not do any damage to my snail population. i lost a few baha over the duration of a few monthes, but did not justify them as the only reason for the lose of the snails. So to make it simple on you everythig has its place in a reef tank the only thing is you need to find yours. Leave the tank alone and it will flurish

[nycreef]

whew! now thats a load of my mind. thanks guys.

[Doug1]

Gotta agree with MrMike, there are literally thousands of species of worms from a reef environment, the only a very small percentage we may encounter are truly bad for the tank.Those we deal with on a case by case basis. The rest of the assortment of bristleworms, spaghetti worm, fan and featherdusters, peanut and medusae worms are mostly beneficial consuming detritous at several stages and breeding populations will contribute so zooplankton in the form of reproductive materiel and larvae.
The more diversity you have the more efficiant the food webs and the less you need rely on mechanical filtration