What is this crazy critter?

[mikieaggie99]

Found it in my DSB today...any ideas?

[Dack77]

pretty sure its a spaghetti worm

[mikieaggie99]

Good or bad?

[o.c.d.]

Timarete (Ball of yarn worm) They are a useful sandbed and LR resident.They are desirable by people like me.Good clean up crew worm

[mikieaggie99]

Excellent...thanks!

[o.c.d.]

O ya the dark stuff inside it is detritus

[mikieaggie99]

That's what it tasted like, but I wasn't sure. Thanks again.

[LeslieH]

It's in family Cirratulidae but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a Timarete. There are species in other genera that have the same coloration. Doesn't matter, they all basically act & feed alike. They're detritus feeders that gather food particles with the feeding tentacles. Some LFS stores sell them separately or as part of cleaner crew packs.

[o.c.d.]

I'm going off a pic from Spungs invert guide quick ref and the pics look darn close,I looked up Timarete in Colfo & Fenner they call it a medusa worm,and the little bands around the tentecals are even visable.I can't find anything on Cirratulidae,you must have better ref guide is their a really good guide you could recommend?

[pagojoe]

Heh, Leslie probably isn't using a quick reference, she actually has access to scientific literature. The guides tend to be "one size fits all" and can compress 2,000 species into 40 pics. They are guides, and good starting places for looking up ID's, but they are necessarily incomplete, and often wrong.

Cheers,



Don