Bristle Worm Spawned!

[frostbite]

I came home today and my tank was really cloudy, I panicked and did all the water test and every thing came in okay, then I notice that there were Bristle worms all over the rocks and they all had their head up in the current, and one by one they begin to "puff smoke". I have been watching for an hour, and there's about one every 30 second! the SPS don't seem to mind but my hammer, frog spawn and bubble are all completely retracted. Is this a once in a year event? I haven't heard of this before from any one else, is this a common occurances?

[Dean812]

I have heard it said that some tanks without skimmers, to take out the extra nutriets, can have plague epidemics of bristleworms. I dont know if you run one but if you do, maybe you have a really "rich" system and have put the worms "in the mood" I'd keep an eye on it! Sounds spooky! Bristleworms are good but too many I would image can cause problems.

[frostbite]

I didn't think I would have too many, I have 6 shrimps in my tank and always thought that they would do a good job eating a lot of the worms. but then again I might be wrong since these guys are tough, I once saw one landed on an large aiptasia (its in my refugium) and it didn't look bother at all depite the aiptasia's attempt to eat it.

[frostbite]

^ bump, is there such thing as too much bristle worms??

[manderx]

mine just spawned last night. i borrowed a HOB skimmer off my other tank for a few hours and it cleared up just fine. none of the corals seemed to notice (sps, lps, BTAs).

i think they got triggered by 85F temp spikes over the past few days. gotta get that cold water coil hooked up to my temp controller+solenoid....

[minimasterflash]

I just witnesses the same phenom that FrostBite described. Nothing in my tank seemed to mind, but I am keeing an eye on them.

I can say 99.9% that they were responding to a detrius storm I caused when I moved 2 rocks in my refugium and caused the entire system to turn into detrius soup.

Whew, talk about freak out... all I could think was "Bristle worms are nuking my tank... AHHHHHHH!!"

[frostbite]

woow, its been a year, may be my bristle worms will do it again soon. I still haven't figure out what trigger it, as I don't run any moon light over my tank and they did it in the middle of the day. And there weren't any event out of the ordinary that last time it happen, I guess their biological calandar just sounded the alarm and they all decided that its time to boogie =)
I'll have to try to catch it on camera if it happen again.
PS. my tuxido urchin has also done the same thing several time, probably more often then I realize since it wasn't an hour long love fest like the bristle worms.

[jeffhaag]

I had all the bristleworms in my 90gal Ecosystem spawn last fall one time. No real reason that I am aware of, but it definately turned the tank cloudy for about 3 days. The only thing I did differently was add some carbon to the sump, but I never ran a skimmer or did any water changes. No issues at all to talk about. Several months later now, I definately have more bristleworms then I ever did before. The nice part though is that they pretty much self balance themselves in that there are only enough as the food supply can support, and they have never bothered anything. It was really exciting to watch though!

[frostbite]

Hmm.. perhaps it has something to do with system that's unskimmed? I have a skimmer but it works poorly so I don't think it really do anything for my tank. Most of the work is done by about 100 lb of LR and a 29 gal refugium. I am thinking about gettting a better skimmer, I wonder if it'll effect the worm population? my experience was the same, no carbon, no water change and every thing was fine.