Worms ???
- Thread starter skipp
- Start date
NateHanson
Non-member
Probably Spaghetti worms? Are they in the sand? The body of spaghetti worms are red and the size you describe.
NateHanson
Non-member
Spaghetti worms are good, but they remain buried vertically in the sand most of the time (although at one point a bunch of mine dragged themselves up the glass). Do the worms you're seeing have a bunch of very thin, long, translucent apendages at one end (looks like spaghetti)?
Nate
Nate
NateHanson
Non-member
WOW! That's a BIG guy! Or at least a very clear macro shot. I've never seen one that close up! 
NateHanson
Non-member
I'm glad I've never gotten that intimate with my worms. They're pretty scary at that magnification.
nunofs
Non-member
NateHanson said:WOW! That's a BIG guy! Or at least a very clear macro shot. I've never seen one that close up!
At first I thought it was in a 5g bucket, it would be huge!
(but then I noticed the grains of sand, that gives some sense of scale and puts it in perspective)Great photo, btw!
Nuno
terebellid worms
Those are terebellid worms. I've got a bunch of them. A couple of mine are really huge. I took a couple from our old FO tank and they've reproduced somehow, but the original ones are about a year and a half old and are pretty monstrously big. They're really neat. Cool to watch. They're very good detritivores.
--cn
Those are terebellid worms. I've got a bunch of them. A couple of mine are really huge. I took a couple from our old FO tank and they've reproduced somehow, but the original ones are about a year and a half old and are pretty monstrously big. They're really neat. Cool to watch. They're very good detritivores.
--cn
BTW, I caught my pom pom crab snacking on the tentacles of one of the terebellid worms the other day. I tried to get pictures, but they didn't come out well enough to make out what's going on. (I need to clean the glass after leaving it go while there were snail egg pods on it.) The crab was munching the ends of the tentacles like they were spaghetti. He was eating both kinds of tentacles, the long striped sticky ones that forage for food, and the shorter stiffer brown ones the function of which I have yet to determine.
Watch these things for a while, they're really cool! Feed them a bit of flake food or really just about anything.
BTW, _Eric_'s pictures are of exactly the sort of terebellid worm I have. They are *not* cirratulid worms. Cirratulid worms have mistakenly been called spaghetti worms too, but they are very different from terebellid worms. Cirratulid worms only have two feeding tentacles for the most obvious example.
--cn
Watch these things for a while, they're really cool! Feed them a bit of flake food or really just about anything.
BTW, _Eric_'s pictures are of exactly the sort of terebellid worm I have. They are *not* cirratulid worms. Cirratulid worms have mistakenly been called spaghetti worms too, but they are very different from terebellid worms. Cirratulid worms only have two feeding tentacles for the most obvious example.
--cn
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Check out this link..
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/rs/
Look at both species..You will notice in my picture that he has tentacles,"Gills" all the way down its body.
Sorry for the late responce..Been real buisy.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/rs/
Look at both species..You will notice in my picture that he has tentacles,"Gills" all the way down its body.
Sorry for the late responce..Been real buisy.
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JustDavidP
Non-member
skipp,
Yours sound like peanut worms. Do a google. They are harmless too.
D
Yours sound like peanut worms. Do a google. They are harmless too.
D
_Eric_ said:
Yeah, that's a good article, I'd seen that. Read it too, the words are even better than the pictures and drawings. The worms in my tank and your picture are definitely terebellid, not cirratulid worms. The descriptions and behaviors match exactly those in the article. I believe the things you refer to as gills here are not gills, but something else. Those look more like the short solid colored spiky non-feeding tentacles that also occur among the longer thinner striped feeding tentacles around the head. I believe the gills in your pictures are the spongy looking light pink masses near the head. A bit of gill has broken off in your top picture I believe.
I have spent many, many hours observing these things. They were the first weird creepy thing that appeared out of thin air (water?) in our old FO tank, and we spent a lot of time trying to figure them out and, well, just watching them. I'm fascinated by all these sorts of things in my tanks and watch them for hours with magnifying lenses. I'm quite certain of this ID, especially after rereading the article you linked here.
--cn
OK, I dont want to argue with you...If you think they are terebellid worms thats ok with me.
Check this out now...(Not because they used my picture but as an example.)You know that pink spongy thing is a picture of a piece of food that I fed it so it would stretch out for me to take the picture right
http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=163864
Check this out now...(Not because they used my picture but as an example.)You know that pink spongy thing is a picture of a piece of food that I fed it so it would stretch out for me to take the picture right
http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=163864
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ReeferMedic
Non-member
Either one of you want to sell one or two of these worms? I love diversity......
