Jump to content
Coral Vue Hydros

Very small black worms


Northeastgareef

Recommended Posts

Northeastgareef

They are about 1/4" to 3/4" long. Very thin and move very slow. I've recently seen an explosion of them and getting concerned. Here is another pic. What looks like black lines on the rock are all a worm/ animal thing. Real wanting to know if this is something harmful. My tank is about 3 months old.

post-88381-0-50540100-1438913572_thumb.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Get a magnifying glass, and look for a few key features

 

Do they have antennae?

If so how many?

 

Do they have feathery gills on the sides?

 

Do they extend and contract or just move side to side?

 

Can you see any mouthparts?

 

Depending on the answers there may be more questions

I personally don't think that these worms should be particularly concerning, actually they can be very wonderful Cuc members

Link to comment
Northeastgareef

It looks like they have a small very small hole for a mouth. The draw up and retract when touched. Other than that it's hard to seen them move, they move slower than a snail. Also when the lights are turned on they go into the holes in the live rock, they only come out at night.

Cannot make out any gills or antenna

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Looks like you have a type of Nemertea worm. Many are carnivores, some scavenge, try putting some small pieces of meat on the rock at dark and see if they will scavenge.

Link to comment

They can be excellent, scavenging for food scraps. or they could be eating your amphipod and polychaete stocks, which would make them terrible additions.

Do you have lots of amphipods?

Did you have lots?

 

Have you been putting food in the tank?

Do the meat test and see if they like to scavenge.

Link to comment
Northeastgareef

I have a lot of pods in my tank now. I only have 1 fish. A damsel which I feed him a few pellets of food. And my corals I feed phytoplankton every other day or 2. Other than that I'm not feeds excessively. I do feed my corals brine shrimp, occasionally and now that I think of it, I first saw these after I stated that. I've feed them twice Ina two week period ( the brine shrimp) and not a lot. The fish are most of them anyways.

I'll try the meat test. It's just an alarming rate of multiplying in the past few days. But when the lights are on, they are no where to be seen.

I've also noticed that they do not like flow. They are in areas of the tank the powerheads current does not get to well. Like on the back sides of rock, or on the glass right at the sand bed

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Sorry I didn't get to here sooner.

The healthy pod population is a good sign, and it also is a good sign that the fish and corals are first to eat the brine shrimp because that could mean the worms are eating the fish and corals poop.

They might prefer the low flow areas because that is where the waste accumulates best.

 

Tube worms I would doubt for several reasons, one is that they ( your worms) have the proboscis, that doesn't occur in tube worms( some glyceradae worms do build tubes and have a proboscis but they aren't normally considered tube worms and their movements and appearance are much different than yours) . Then we have the issue of sluggish movement, tube worms are usually more swiftly moving, I say usually for good reason lol.

 

What happened with the meat test?

Link to comment
Northeastgareef

I still have not done the meat test yet. Going to try and get a raw shrimp today and try it later on this evening and see what happens

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I still have not done the meat test yet. Going to try and get a raw shrimp today and try it later on this evening and see what happens

yoy can use really any meat, you can even use a sliver of chicken, I don't want to make it inconvenient for you.
Link to comment
Northeastgareef

Alrighty. I put a 1/4 cube of frozen marine cusine in with the lights on and they came out. So yes it seems they light meaty foods. I can't say I saw any of them eating it, unless it was microscopic particles. But they knew when it was in the water, and so did all the other critters. All my hermits and snails and such came and had a feast.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Northeastgareef

I've also seen what looks like eggs on one of my rocks near where I first saw them. It may be unrelated. They are small black dots no more than the size of a ball point pen tip , covering about a 1/2" square section on the rock. Not many worm seen near this area since I first seen them. They are more seen in the sand bed or on my macro algae more and more as time goes on. But like I said first, they are not seen much with the lights on. But will come out if food is present.

Link to comment

The best name we can get to is Nemertea.

Not sure of the black dots, nemerteans have a very diverse amount of reproductive strategies so it could be from them

Link to comment
  • 5 years later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recommended Discussions

×
×
  • Create New...