Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Interesting that you asked if it was after a sand cleaning. I did a water change today and cleaned the sand. There are TONS of these things all in the sand. So I guess what I am seeing has been after a sand cleaning.strange they are not embedded, was this after a sand cleaning?
How is the tank otherwise?
Not spaghetti- no tubes or stringersspaghetti worm
These are hair worms (cirratulid polychaetes). Like bristleworms, their population will increase with overfeeding, etc. You said you have high nitrates, so it's possible that there is extra organic material (food, dead critters, etc) in the system. There's really no harm in having a lot of hair worms (or bristles, for that matter) as they are part of your cuc. Personally, I don't have very many nassarius snails right now (reefcleaners sent me whelks instead and they killed my nassariuses...) and my sandbed has a lot of hair worms that do a similar job (not the same since they don't airate the sandbed, but they keep the surface of the sandbed clean).Interesting that you asked if it was after a sand cleaning. I did a water change today and cleaned the sand. There are TONS of these things all in the sand. So I guess what I am seeing has been after a sand cleaning.
I always thought that it was uneaten food in the sand bed. I have been seeing them for quite a while during sand bed cleanings.
Do I need to be worried with the amount I am finding? Should I be getting a natural predator? The curious thing is they look very dead during the sand cleaning, but they just might not be an animated worm.
They generally aren't going to move much if disturbed. But after you feed your tank, do you see little brown/red tentacles coming out of the sand and/or rocks? That's themThe curious thing is they look very dead during the sand cleaning, but they just might not be an animated worm.