Oenone Fulgida!

[Wolperthinger]

Hi All,

I am new to reef keeping and I thought it would be fun to share my introduction (horror) story to the hobby.

I started out with a 10g tank that had an arag-alive substrate bottom. I then bought 2 chunks of live rock and let the tank go for a few weeks while monitoring the water parameters. When I was satisfied with the stability of the water parameters I bought some snails and an emerald crab to add to the tank. Mysteriously, the snails seemed to get "raptured" and disappeared one by one until they were all gone and nothing was left but shells. After a few snail purchases later I figured it had to be something I was doing wrong with the water parameters and gave up on keeping snails. About a week later I went to feed the emerald crab some blood worms (I don't have a steady growth of algae yet) and to my horror one of my rocks was infested with bright orange worms- and they were going CRAZY for the blood worms that had just entered the sand bed next to their rock. It was pretty comical watching the emerald crab fight the Oenone for the blood worms.

At the time I had no idea what kind of worms these were and it took a lot of google-fu to figure out what they were called. I pulled the rock out and spent a few hours trying to get all of the worms out by hand, There were probably about 30-40 of them in varying sizes in this small 2.5lb rock. See the pics below:

The live rock is now dry rock and I don't think it will be touching water again any time soon.

Feel free to share your pest stories and photos below!

 

[T-J]

Looks like common bristle worms. I probably have thousands of them in my tank. Part of my CUC.

 

[Cable]

tbh I fear I have the same thing. I am also new to the hobbie and unfortunately I dont see a clear path of eradication.

See my post below for images and pictures of the worms under a microscope .

What is this worm? Microscope Images + Video

Hello, I have these worms in my tank and I cant figure out what type of worm they are. They are FAST and hide 99% of the time. I haven't seen them do anything bad though I do not like them. They are carnivorous as far as I can tell as when I had a fish die I saw multiple of these worms floating...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Hadla]

I would put another snail in the tank to test it! From what I understand they can also live in the sand… I had looked into getting one of these for my biocube before it crashed due to an electrical short in the light.

Regius Cone Snail, Conus regius

Regius Cones are well known for feeding upon Bristle Worms. These are 2 to 2.5 inches in length and are mildly venomous. Their sting is similar to a Yellow Jacket. Handle with care.

reeftopia.com

Before that, I dealt with them for about 5 years and luckily they were contained to my biocube. From what I’ve read through other people’s experiences on here through that whole time was that this snail is one of the only predators of them and hadn’t seen it for sale until a year or two ago

 

[Cable]

I would put another snail in the tank to test it! From what I understand they can also live in the sand… I had looked into getting one of these for my biocube before it crashed due to an electrical short in the light.

Regius Cone Snail, Conus regius

Regius Cones are well known for feeding upon Bristle Worms. These are 2 to 2.5 inches in length and are mildly venomous. Their sting is similar to a Yellow Jacket. Handle with care.

reeftopia.com

Before that, I dealt with them for about 5 years and luckily they were contained to my biocube. From what I’ve read through other people’s experiences on here through that whole time was that this snail is one of the only predators of them and hadn’t seen it for sale until a year or two ago

I love the irony of a snail being their only predator.

 

[Hadla]

Also letting the rocks dry out won’t work according to multiple stories I’ve read about them! I think they can live with very small amounts of moisture. People have dried rocks for months and still had the worms come out