What Are These On My Blastomussa?

[Renfield42]

I got this blasto a couple of weeks ago. I dipped it in Revive and transferred it into my coral QT tank where it seemed to be doing well. I noticed these between the polyps after lights out yesterday. They're hidden when the polyps extend.

They dont respond to light or touch and are fairly rigid. I've not seen anything like tentacles or mucous strings extending from them, but they are very small.

They look like some kind of tube worm, and possibly a vermetid snail or two in there as well. A caulastrea I got in the same shipment also had some of these on its base, but not nearly as many.

What are these? Good, bad neutral?
Thanks in advance.

 

[p1u5h13r4m24]

I believe they are spionid worms

 

[Renfield42]

The question then is are these harmless spionids or the coral boring kind?

 

[BristleWormHater]

The question then is are these harmless spionids or the coral boring kind?

These are the typically harmless kind, coral boring worms do not build tubes, they bore into the coral or substrate instead. Does the coral still have good polyp extension in the water? If not I would brush these off.

 

[Renfield42]

These are the typically harmless kind, coral boring worms do not build tubes, they bore into the coral or substrate instead. Does the coral still have good polyp extension in the water? If not I would brush these off.

Thanks, that's what it looked like to me based on the images of the boring spionids I'd seen while researching, but I'm still new to this stuff and want to be sure. I've gone to a lot of trouble to QT all the livestock and corals and would like to forestall the inevitable "nature will find a way" moment for as long as I can.

So far the coral is extending well, but some of the tubes were right up against the bottom of the polyp's tissue so I'd bet the coral would start getting irritated very soon. I scraped off all of the tubes I could but I'm sure there are some I couldn't get to.

Thanks everyone for your input, much appreciated.

 

[Renfield42]

Turns out that these are "micro feather dusters". Perusing the forum there are a couple of different critters called that, but they behave similarly. Sometimes they stay in manageable numbers, other times, not. Feeding particulate food seems to be a common factor in a population explosion.

Manual removal has been ineffective. Using a magnifying visor, dental tools, tweezers, and a scalpel to scrape them off was only partially effective despite multiple attempts.

I tried 1 hour dips (3 times) in Ivermectin (a worm killer) at up to double the normally recommended rate, and still they came back / survived. (The corals were unphased by the Ivermectin).

It would probably take covering the entire base of the coral in superglue to have any hope in eradicating the worms. Problem is some of them are right up against the coral tissue.

The worms have even started colonizing the overflow box on the QT tank. This is in a very low nutrient tank, a bare glass QT with nothing but 2 corals and some egg crate. I shudder to think what they would do in the display with much higher access to food and territory. Some kind of predator would be necessary to keep them in check.

 

[Renfield42]

Another update. It appears that pitho crabs will pick at the micro dusters. I saw one of my crabs grooming the blasto today and removing many of the dusters. We’ll see if they make an effective control on the population.

 

[BryanM]

Another update. It appears that pitho crabs will pick at the micro dusters. I saw one of my crabs grooming the blasto today and removing many of the dusters. We’ll see if they make an effective control on the population.

we have so many wild issues in our little ocean universes.