Bristle Worm?

[Coralover]

Do bristle worms eat snails?
I have bought a whole bunch of snails and they just dissapear(I only see their shells), and today I saw a HUGE(atleast to me is huge :D) bristle worm, it was sticking out of a rock and it was atleast 5" long so it's big since there was even more part of it in the rock, and looks even bigger in my tank(only a 10g).
Anyway I saw it bothering one of my nassarius snails today and he took the snail behind a rock(I couldn't see that well), and after a while the snail just seem to stay there, I can just see the shell and the snail won't move.:(

Any ideas on how to get this guy out of my tank?

[CrystalAZ]

No, bristleworms don't eat snails. There are some types of worms that do, but if you see a bristleworm eating a snail, it was probably already dead. They are scavengers.

Do you have hermits? If so, they are likely the culprits.

Crystal

[Coralover]

The snail was trying to escape and when the worm took it into the whole it looked like it ate him cause it stopped moving. But now that I think about it I don't think it's a bristle worm, this one was greenish. And yeah I have hermits, but they seem to die also, snails and hermits are the only ones that dissapear, I had like 7 zebra hermits and they started dissapearing little by little.


lol I barely saw your signature.

[CrystalAZ]

lol I barely saw your signature.

It's an endless and thankless task, but someone has to do it.

Long live the bristleworms! :D

Crystal

[bertoni]

You could try to capture the worm and get a photograph, but if it grabbed a live snail, it's almost certainly a predator and something you'll want to remove from your tank.

[Coralover]

Originally posted by bertoni
You could try to capture the worm and get a photograph, but if it grabbed a live snail, it's almost certainly a predator and something you'll want to remove from your tank.

I did tryed to grab it, but the damn thing is too fast.=/
It goes right in the hole whenever it feels movement or anything.

[bertoni]

Sigh. Sometimes you can get them to come out of the rock by pulling the rock out of the water and pouring seltzer water into the hold where it's hiding. Other than that, you can try a trap.

[Coralover]

It's hard to take the rock out(it's full of xenia), what kind of trap can I use?

[bertoni]

Oh, sigh. Well, you could try making a trap by cutting off the top of a plastic soda bottle, inverting it, and inserting bait, etc.