** ID Please! **

[astrogazer]

Is this a Bristle Worm?


http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i72/djpalliser/ddd119d5.jpg


It is imaged close to scale, it's about 5 - 6" long. It resides under a rather large colony of Green Star Polyps. I've had the colony for about 8 months now and I'm assuming he hitched in with it. Do I want it? Tonight is the first time I've ever seen it.

Thanks in advance for the help ... :)

[chrismunn]

yes

[Monkey_Bone]

Ditto.

[LeslieH]

Part of one anyway and an interesting part. See the abrupt difference in size between the left & right sections? Somehow it lost part of it's body; the smaller section is being regrown. Without a shot of the head it's difficult to tell if it's Hermodice the coral predator or Eurythoe the scavenger. I suppose that if your corals are okay it's the harmless one.

[Monkey_Bone]

I believe those could two seperate worms mating.
one seems to be coming ot of the rock on the left.

[astrogazer]

As I visually observed I wasn't able to see the detail present in the above image. I appeared to be 1 worm. He came out of a small cave in the base of my star polyp colony to the upper right of the image and he crawled out towards the bottom left. As I studied the photo it does almost appear to be 2 worms joined together. If I see him again I will attempt a more detailed image of the head/mouth, it is rather shy and difficult to image. I have had a problem with acros in this tank, but i think this more of a husbandry problem, all other corals seem to be doing fine.

[astrogazer]

Here's a couple of other images that I got from last night, maybe these will show the head/mouth better. Here he is retreating back into his cave, center right 9top photo) and near the upper right (bottom photo), these are shot from almost head on.

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i72/djpalliser/928ea9f5.jpg

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i72/djpalliser/39614f1f.jpg

[LeslieH]

thanks for the new shots. Eurythoe I believe. The caruncle (= sense organ; the dark cyclinder in the middle of the head region on the left) isn't large enough or pleated to be Hermodice. On the other hand, Hermodice begins feeding on corals by eating off the tips of the branches. I hope this isn't what's happening to your acros?

This is a nifty specimen. The first photo in your last post shows an area near the regeneration zone where there's a regrowth abnormality. That doesn't happen very often.

[astrogazer]

Ahh ... is that what that is... it IS one specimen, but almost appears to be two.