what the heck??! I cleaned my tank and it looks like some one dumped these things inside??!!

[RVA REEF]

lol I would keep taking out the rock and running it under hot water till things improve

 

[jeffrey750750]

Oh my worm!

 

[Roytrolls247]

Shop vac water change lol

 

[Goonofthelagoon]

This is insane? Never have I ever in my entire life in this hobby so far seen anything as wild as this? Its like you just scooped up thousands of these things from somewhere and dumped them in. You sure you cleaned your tank correctly? Dumping bristle worms in your tank usually aint how people clean a tank? But hell, what do I know lol

 

[Goonofthelagoon]

You are a fool then( I say this in jest, not to be mean. Written word often times does not reflect tone).

I used to do it too(many many years) until I found a better way. You know how we as a civilization get smarter so we avoid danger and live longer? Same applies here.

And yes there is bacteria in a reef aquarium that our gut bacteria do not break down and can make us very sick. It has never happened to me, but it can happen(off the top of my head, vibrio comes to mind).

Sorry to the OP for derailing the thread.

Isnt there also some kinda flesh eating disease in our reef tanks? Its called like Necrosis or something like that? Thats just terrifying to even think about

 

[Tired]

"Necrosis" is a general term for the breakdown of flesh. You're probably thinking of vibrio, which is rare but can be present in reefs, and causes necrosis. It's nasty stuff. Very common along the coastline of Texas, on oysters. If you cut yourself on an oystershell, you have to pretty much immediately disinfect the cut.

 

[boacvh]

Ok, you have not really posted a thorough list of events leading up to this, just snippets throughout the thread, and people are rubber necking at the massive bristle worm pile up. It sounds like you decided to remove your rocks as part of a clean-up effort and run them under hot tap water. Then the bristle worms swarmed out and swooped into action cleaning the rocks. Then your fish died and the tank smells bad. Was that close to what transpired?

What I think occurred here, is that you have an older tank, that you feed really well, perhaps a bit too well. During the cleaning of the rocks under running hot tap water, this killed a bunch of stuff on, in and around the rocks. The bristle worm team swooped into action to clean up the sudden spike in death. However the running of hot tap water over your rocks also impacted your biological filter and your tank entered a period of cycling the biological filter. This resulted in high ammonia levels, which started a further cascade of death resulting in the demise of your fish and bad odour coming from the tank.

Where to go from here? As others have said, you can start over and remove and clean everything, or you can just do nothing at all. If you have no fish left alive, no need to feed the tank, you simply need to keep the tank running and let it regain it's balance. Things will settle down, stuff will die and stuff will be born to move the tank along through the stages on it's way to balance. There will be waves of creatures that seem to take over followed by those creatures disappearing to be replaced by something new. Eventually, the tank will be in balance and stop having massive blooms of creatures and ugly algae. At that point you can think about replacing your fish and inverts.

Our tanks contain massive food webs, well at least the healthy ones do. Most of the time, those food webs are hidden and opaque to us, but occasionally something transpires to pull the curtain back, and allow us a view into the food web. In your case the hot water rinse showed you how many bristle worms were present and working in the shadows to keep things in balance.

Personally, I would not remove any of them, assuming they are still alive and removable, left alone they will balance themselves out and will clean up the tank as things die.

It would be worthwhile to post a list of the events that lead up to this to allow people to help you understand what triggered the cascade for future reference.

Dennis

Such a well thought out, rational post in this sea of emotional responses. Definitely following you now!

 

[Tankkeepers]

Omg iv never seen so many before ya do not touch them they pack a heck of a sting if any of them are larger then 6 inches and have a blue shimmer to them they could be fire worms which get very large and hurt like fire when you get stung also can eat fish if you want them gone there are a few fish and crabs that love them dont remember the ones off the top of my head tho sorry but as was said before you can either start over compleatly id get rid of everything in that case becouse if you have that many there are alot still in the rocks and you will never get those rocks clean enoff to use as they will be leach factorys or let nature take it course which could be a long while and do lots of water changes as you will get huge nutrient spikes along the way due to die off but those are definatly a sign of overfeeding for a long long time I wish you the best in whatever route you take

 

[SaltISlife]

If that were my tank. Id tear it down and bleach every rock and the sand for days. And dip every coral and restart.

Sorry lol

 

[Tired]

Please do not tear down your tank because you have too many of a harmless animal that people are afraid of.

 

[Cell]

Please do not tear down your tank because you have too many of a harmless animal that people are afraid of.

Except they arent harmless when they can sting you. And if something were to happen to cause some to die, it could potentially cascade rather quickly.

 

[Tired]

I've been stung by bristleworms. It's minorly annoying, like a splinter. They aren't venomous. Even with people who react more strongly, they aren't dangerous, just uncomfortable. And, again- you don't touch them! Don't pick up your rocks with bare hands. Pick up your rocks with gloves on. Don't put yourself in a situation where bristleworms can sting you, because you're also putting yourself in a situation where you can get a bacterial infection from a cut. And that's MUCH more worrying than bristleworms.

All those bristleworms have been in there the whole time. Yes, it's a lot, but manually removing some via siphon is very simple. This is not the sort of pest that's worth entirely restarting a tank. Especially not bleaching the rock into dead rock.

 

[Cell]

Nobody called them dangerous. You called them harmless. They are not harmless. That's all.

 

[Chibils]

I used to have thousands of them in my 90 (about 10 years ago). I know I grabbed them several times by accident and didn't even experience a sting. Literally felt nothing. I'm well aware there are thousands of Polychaete varieties, and some can be quite irritating, some people have different reactions, etc. but imo plain old bristleworms are a terrible reason to break down a tank.

 

[RVA REEF]

they are venomous, just not deadly.

 

[reeflife92]

While bristle worms CAN be part of a clean up crew, their numbers are tied to your feeding. They can only reproduce as fast as they have a food source. Either you fed WAY too much or something major happened that you did not notice.

If it were me I would reboot the tank. I would soak every rock in a fresh water dip and let them all squirm out, and I would net out the rest of the tank, and then put your rocks all back in. You do not want to kill that many worms in there and have that many rotting in there, they will nuke the tank.

You are the chosen one ☝

 

[Dennis Begley]

Someone please tell me what to do!! What is this and why??!!

Don't panic. Who knows where they come from but as the tank cycles they will reach a level. They are part of the clean up crew. I had a similar issue with them as my tank aged. They were everywhere in my tank. One of my friends suggested I should go into the business of selling them I had so many. That was about a year ago. I still have them but nothing like I had at that time. No, they did not eat my fish or my corals. You want a real shock, after the lights go off wait about an hour then shine a blue light into the tank. They mostly come out at night. I just let time settle out the population. An outbreak of these worms likely means there is too much food going into the tank.

My wife won't look at my tank due to my bristle worms. Hey, it is what it is. If that is your worse problem you are doing great with your tank. Do not panic though. Bristle worms are doing what they are supposed to do and that is eating stuff your tank that needs to be removed. You can really throw the balance off by overreacting. I considered getting a coral banded shrimp to eat them. I think the blue variety is the one that will eat them. I didn't though and just let the tank adjust itself.

 

[Viva'sReef]

My fingers started swelling and itching the minute i saw this thread......No thank you!! Yes they are beneficial but at what cost? Not very pleasant to look at lol.

 

[PicassoClown04]

According to LA, all the arrow crab species eat bristleworms

 

[ReefBeta]

Doesn't matter much good brittle worm could be, it's definitely the example of too much of a good thing.