bristle worms, good or bad?
- Thread starter new reefer in michigan
- Start date
I think that bristle worms are just great. They do a wonderful job of cleaning up scraps of food, which lets you feed your fish and corals more often without worrying about fouling the water. In a big tank, if a fish or something dies (hey, it happens
) and the body is somewhere that you can't get it out, a good population of bristle worms will clean it up, with out letting the body rot and pollute the tank.
There are a few, uncommon types of bristle worms that may be nasty, but these are rarely encountered in reef tanks.
The vast majority of bristle worms will not hurt fish or corals. I have had bristle worms eat on a clam that was dying, but they did not kill it. When the calm died and I removed it, I could seee that a whelk had drilled holes in the shell and devoured it from the bottom. The bristles were just trying to do thier job and dispose of the remains, but I think that is how they got thier bad reputation. Poeple would come home and see them eating something and assume that they did it in, when the worms were merely cleaning up the remains of something that died of other causes.
There are a few, uncommon types of bristle worms that may be nasty, but these are rarely encountered in reef tanks.
The vast majority of bristle worms will not hurt fish or corals. I have had bristle worms eat on a clam that was dying, but they did not kill it. When the calm died and I removed it, I could seee that a whelk had drilled holes in the shell and devoured it from the bottom. The bristles were just trying to do thier job and dispose of the remains, but I think that is how they got thier bad reputation. Poeple would come home and see them eating something and assume that they did it in, when the worms were merely cleaning up the remains of something that died of other causes.
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