Bristle worms! Help!!!

Bensadork · Jul 17, 2015

Wow I had no idea lawnmower blennies would eat bristle worms. I have A fat pig of a lawnmower blenny and all I've ever seen him eat is tank algae off the rocks and glass and flakes. I have at least 2 big fat boy bristle worms in the tank that I've seen and the blenny never seems to pay any attention to them at all. I may need to keep an eye out on these roommates and see if that blenny decides to have a worm dinner

Betty1964 · Jul 17, 2015

Use a bottle trap to trap large bristle worms and don't worry about small ones. They clean up the garbage that gets left behind so they are pretty beneficial to your tank.

A bottle trap is a pretty easy thing to build. Google diy bristle worm traps and you can make one for next to nothing.

Oldsalt01 · Jul 17, 2015

He may be too well fed to bother with them. Unless your tank is literally crawling with them, I'd leave them alone. I got nailed by one before I knew what they were. Yah, it hurt, but a piece of duct tape pulled the spine out and I just made sure to give them the respect they're due. They do keep uneaten food from polluting your tank and as was said in another post, they can get to places crabs and snails can't. That said I will divulge that I caught my blennie off a man-made reef in Boca years ago, so he may have been used to eating BW's as part of his diet.

wangspeed · Jul 18, 2015

Maybe it's because I feed live blackworms, but I don't have many bristle worms. Any that are dumb enough to show up get eaten by my wrasses or some of my other fish. Even my cleaner shrimp would eat them. He would twirl them around and around while picking little bits off til they were gone. Slowly eaten alive. That'll learn the others :)