How big before bristleworms become a problem?

[JoJosReef]

omg, bristle worms don't gross me out normally but THIS IS GROSS!

I might have just tossed the whole tank in the street vs cleaning that out. I watched the whole video unable to look away but my face... was twisted in horror!

It is one thing to have some bristleworms hanging out cleaning up but it's another to have a wreathing mass of bodies!!

I just want to know how it gets that bad. What conditions lead to that many bristleworms in the plumbing!?

 

[PharmrJohn]

My favorite video LOL

Oh. My. God. That is DISGUSTING! TWICE I yelled at the phone "Dude! Be Careful!!" when your hand got below the worm mass.

 

[PharmrJohn]

omg, bristle worms don't gross me out normally but THIS IS GROSS!

I might have just tossed the whole tank in the street vs cleaning that out. I watched the whole video unable to look away but my face... was twisted in horror!

It is one thing to have some bristleworms hanging out cleaning up but it's another to have a wreathing mass of bodies!!

When I was a snot-nosed pharmacy student I saw (and smelled) a righteous case of gangrene. This grossed me out more than that! Easily!

 

[fishface NJ]

When I was a snot-nosed pharmacy student I saw (and smelled) a righteous case of gangrene. This grossed me out more than that! Easily!

 

[ReefED!]

My opinion is too many is a bit of a nuisance but I think the only REAL way to control their population is access to food. Consider feeding less food at once but more times throughout the day. They tend to control their own population to the quantity of leftover uneaten food that makes it to the sandbed, and feeding less but more frequently would end with more of that food in fish tummies

I don't think this is realistic at all

If I tried to control the bristelworms, my hermits and fish wouldn't get enough food.

These guys will eat anything - including bacterial slime on sand

They're probably best controlled with a voracious predator but many of those aren't very nice - I have/had a blue coral banded shrimp but haven't seen it in quite a while

Which dips work the best to get rid of them?

Peroxide kills them almost instantly, but peroxide is rough on a lot of corals

I'll be doing a tank upgrade sometime in the future and I want to do a new aquascape and dip all my corals before they go in to purge bristleworms

I think they're just as preventable as aiptasia - I just got sloppy because I didn't realize how tiny they could be (smaller than rice grains).

 

[BriDroid]

I don't think this is realistic at all

If I tried to control the bristelworms, my hermits and fish wouldn't get enough food.

These guys will eat anything - including bacterial slime on sand

They're probably best controlled with a voracious predator but many of those aren't very nice - I have/had a blue coral banded shrimp but haven't seen it in quite a while

Which dips work the best to get rid of them?

Peroxide kills them almost instantly, but peroxide is rough on a lot of corals

I'll be doing a tank upgrade sometime in the future and I want to do a new aquascape and dip all my corals before they go in to purge bristleworms

I think they're just as preventable as aiptasia - I just got sloppy because I didn't realize how tiny they could be (smaller than rice grains).

I had a TON fall off of a couple of zoa frags when I used Brightwell KoralMD, basically one of the tea tree oil dips. They didn't like it at all!

 

[Cthulukelele]

I don't think this is realistic at all

If I tried to control the bristelworms, my hermits and fish wouldn't get enough food.

These guys will eat anything - including bacterial slime on sand

They're probably best controlled with a voracious predator but many of those aren't very nice - I have/had a blue coral banded shrimp but haven't seen it in quite a while

Which dips work the best to get rid of them?

Peroxide kills them almost instantly, but peroxide is rough on a lot of corals

I'll be doing a tank upgrade sometime in the future and I want to do a new aquascape and dip all my corals before they go in to purge bristleworms

I think they're just as preventable as aiptasia - I just got sloppy because I didn't realize how tiny they could be (smaller than rice grains).

They're absolutely not as preventable as aiptasia. Even tanks with voracious bristleworm predators have bristleworms. Their populations are heavily controlled and you may never see them, but they're there. Imo they're much more akin to pods where you just end up with them eventually no matter what you do.

Also for really controlling bristleworm pops you need a BIG fish and a truly predatorial fish (read: also usually nibbles hermits, snails, and small shrimp). We're talking triggers, large wrasse, puffers, or hogfish of fish we usually see in the hobby.

What are you feeding and how often? Bristleworms can absolutely be controlled by feeding quantity, and that's how a lot of people with large tanks who want to keep inverts control their bristleworm population.

 

[GARRIGA]

Lots of hate for bristleworms yet fire worms what I'd want to avoid. Not sure size matters but as mentioned the traps are an option.

 

[ReefED!]

They're absolutely not as preventable as aiptasia. Even tanks with voracious bristleworm predators have bristleworms. Their populations are heavily controlled and you may never see them, but they're there. Imo they're much more akin to pods where you just end up with them eventually no matter what you do.

Also for really controlling bristleworm pops you need a BIG fish and a truly predatorial fish (read: also usually nibbles hermits, snails, and small shrimp). We're talking triggers, large wrasse, puffers, or hogfish of fish we usually see in the hobby.

What are you feeding and how often? Bristleworms can absolutely be controlled by feeding quantity, and that's how a lot of people with large tanks who want to keep inverts control their bristleworm population.

I feed frozen twice a day, and just enough so that there’s some food for the hermits

Bristleworms can absolutely be prevented

You get them from rock or sand or coral frags (or macro algae)

I screwed up and stopped dipping a bunch of my coral frags because some don’t like dips and I didn’t realize they start so small - I figured you’d see them easily and they’d only come in on large colonies

 

[Cthulukelele]

I feed frozen twice a day, and just enough so that there’s some food for the hermits

Bristleworms can absolutely be prevented

You get them from rock or sand or coral frags (or macro algae)

I screwed up and stopped dipping a bunch of my coral frags because some don’t like dips and I didn’t realize they start so small - I figured you’d see them easily and they’d only come in on large colonies

If there's food on the bottom for hermits crabs, bristleworms are eating 5x as much of it. You really don't need to worry about hermits getting settled food on the sandbed. I haven't watched a hermits eat more than 5-10 times in 7 years and I still have some of my original blue leg hermits and some at least 6 year old scarlet hermits in my tank. Visible food making it to the bottom of the tank for CUC = too much imo and very happy bellied bristleworms.


And at the end of the day if you think bristleworms are as preventable as aiptasia I'm not going to change your mind, but I will just say that it is pretty challenging to have a system where you kill the dozens of inverts living in and under the skeleton of corals you buy without losing almost all your coral. If you want to argue that bristleworms are theoretically avoidable, sure. Life does not spontaneously appear.


Practically, however, bristleworms are an inevitability in almost every tank in existence. I have yet to meet someone irl who didn't have bristleworms in their tank if you know where to look. I've heard strangers on the internet (usually newer reefers) say they didn't have them or other reefers say they don't have them because they pull all the ones they see (there 100x more in your tank than the ones visible at any given time) or they have a predator (they hide like every other organism when being predated).

I've seen plenty of tanks without aiptasia including my own.

 

[BasementBox]

Flamehawkfish and 6 line are hunter killers. Expect them to keep it in check.

 

[ReefED!]

I didn't have Bristleworms for over a year. Not a single one.

They showed up maybe 6 months ago so they were probably introduced 3 months before that.

Small frags, dip, dry rock and clean chaeto and you won't have any bristleworms. I also used to religiously remove frag plugs with a dremel - but I got lazy and didn't want to damage the corals.

I would like to test and prove this with my next tank but I'm not 100% sure that the corals I bring over and dip won't harbor some

But one can hope - they are vile creatures.

 

[JoJosReef]

They're not that bad. When did a bristleworm get the same public enemy #1 status as Aiptasia?

 

[Reef Puncher]

Large is not the problem
Quantity is the problem.

I find they multiply very rapidly and almost any coral in my sandbed, has some under them. or worse…inside them. That’s right. Bristleworm babies are super tiny - smaller than grains of rice, and they climb in coral skeleton ridges seeking safe spots to rest

The big ones never really seem to cause an issue. It’s the tons of little ones that bother my corals.

Get a trap. I find everytime I put the trap near my known spots for them, I don’t catch the big ones I’m aware of. I catch 10-20 tiny ones I was completely unaware of

im so glad i just read this. i was going crazy. everyone on this thread says "oh they arent a problem". i almost lost my banana torch, it was receeding bad, i took it out and dipped it to be safe, and like 8 tiny bristleworms poured out. they were literally making their homes inside of my torch. fast forward a few weeks, and 2 other torches were looking droopy and flat. i dipped them....same thing. tiny little jerks fell out. they are absolutely killing my torches, and even my acan. i hate them so much. i dont know where they came from, i never saw one until a few weeks ago. ughhhhh

 

[Reef Puncher]

They're not that bad. When did a bristleworm get the same public enemy #1 status as Aiptasia?

tell all my torches they are killing that.....

 

[VintageReefer]

tell all my torches they are killing that.....

I’ve lost 3. Yes 3 expensive acantho because of bristleworms. All acantho were in sand bed. All started mysteriously receding and I dipped them and what came out of the skeletal grooves ? Baby tiny bristleworms. I read a post from a few years ago and someone’s said that they go inside the corals looking for food. They can smell it inside the corals stomach. They also go in these tiny crevices to hide in the daylight. I am convinced my acantho loss were caused by bristleworms.

I got a new acantho, and have it elevated in a frag stand, and it’s doing great. I don’t have a water quality or light issue. I have a bristleworm issue

 

[Reef Puncher]

I’ve lost 3. Yes 3 expensive acantho because of bristleworms. All acantho were in sand bed. All started mysteriously receding and I dipped them and what came out of the skeletal grooves ? Baby tiny bristleworms. I read a post from a few years ago and someone’s said that they go inside the corals looking for food. They can smell it inside the corals stomach. They also go in these tiny crevices to hide in the daylight. I am convinced my acantho loss were caused by bristleworms.

I got a new acantho, and have it elevated in a frag stand, and it’s doing great. I don’t have a water quality or light issue. I have a bristleworm issue

i think they do go in looking for food, but i wonder as the flesh starts receeding if they eat the coral? or is just their presence whats killing the coral?

 

[VintageReefer]

i think they do go in looking for food, but i wonder as the flesh starts receeding if they eat the coral? or is just their presence whats killing the coral?

I’m not sure but lps flesh is thin, soft and delicate and bristlewirms have detachable, painful, irritating spines all over them. I can’t see it not causing a problem or making an existing problem worse.

I don’t think bristleworms always cause problems, but I think they can in certain scenarios.

 

[VintageReefer]

tell all my torches they are killing that.....

The timing I swear is incredible

So. I have a high end lobo frag, about 2.5” that I’ve been growing out and it’s been doing great for months. Until lately. It’s been showing skeletal edges. And mouth gaping.

No idea why. I’ve been feeding. Water conditions great and stable. Didn’t know what’s going on.

Well I had a torch come in yesterday and not looking great so I did a kfc dip and while I had my supplies out I was looking at the lobo and thought I’d hit it with some coral revive. I dipped in a kitchen cup and nothing happened. As expected. No pests. I was about to return it to the tank and something stood out to me when looking at the base

Seemed to be some red marks in this old glue covering up the skeletal base

I looked closer…nooo….is this several bristleworms living in the underside of my corals skeleton ? YES

Keep in mind I just did a 15 min coral rx dip and they were unphased. I doubled the dosage and blasted with a baster and added another 15 min to the timer. I could see them moving around but they would not come out.

I then tripled the dose and waited 15 min more. Progress starting.

Then I added some lugols. I know they HATE iodine. Added 5 drops to the cup

Then in addition to the worms, this slender worm came out FAST. No idea what this is

I figured the iodine is working well and j added another 2 drops and waited 10 min. All bristle worms came out from the glue then this guy, out of nowhere, came out of the actual skeleton, not the glue

In the end, I got them all. The skeleton now passes a magnified visual inspection and this was what was expelled from the dips

All these came out from the inside of the coral. The skeletal base on this is ridged and I believe the original owner covered in glue in attempt to seal it.

Now I will wait and see if the efforts have positive results.

In the end these guys survived a normal 15min regular strength dip and it took 1 hour, at 3x coral rx concentration, plus iodine added at double strength to make them all leave

 

[VintageReefer]

I don't think this is realistic at all

If I tried to control the bristelworms, my hermits and fish wouldn't get enough food.

These guys will eat anything - including bacterial slime on sand

They're probably best controlled with a voracious predator but many of those aren't very nice - I have/had a blue coral banded shrimp but haven't seen it in quite a while

Which dips work the best to get rid of them?

Peroxide kills them almost instantly, but peroxide is rough on a lot of corals

I'll be doing a tank upgrade sometime in the future and I want to do a new aquascape and dip all my corals before they go in to purge bristleworms

I think they're just as preventable as aiptasia - I just got sloppy because I didn't realize how tiny they could be (smaller than rice grains).

I have tried direct application and I can tell you my go to…lugols iodine

In a cup of clean saltwater, a few drops of Coral rx directly does nothing at first. Seems it takes a few minutes before it begins to annoy them.

A single direct drop of lugols…that makes them flip out. They hate it. Lugols is most effective if you get the concentration strong enough in the water. Instant reaction