Syllid Worm - Invasive Tentacled Worm

[Bonsai]

The Syllid Worm -- Things that go bump in the night.

 

I've had the unfortunate luck of having to deal with two of these creatures over the last few years. My LFS is a great place, but it seems that their live rock is sometimes plagued with these tissue sucking beasts.

 

A little background -- a few years ago, I started to see my soft coral disappear slowly ... starting with Zenia. I couldn't figure it out, until one night I came by the tank and saw this god awful worm wrapped around the stalks of the coral. After many late nights and a lot of patience, I was able to suck the worm out with a turkey baster.

 

 

 

Crazy looking, right? I thought my days of dealing with the elusive Syllid were over, until I restarted by tank back in May of 2012. I picked up new live rock at the time and ... you guessed it, picked up another worm.

 

In this iteration of the tank, I didn't have any soft coral other than some LPS and Zoas .. which the worm didn't seem to have a taste for. This guy was after my acropora ... and he did a fine job of wiping out a few nice (expensive) colonies.

 

This one was smaller, and really really difficult to catch.

• I tried the turkey baster trick to no avail.
• I tried grabbing it with tweezers, but these things are like a spring ... the moment they sense something is wrong, they retract.
• Finally, out of sheer desperation, I tore apart my rock work and did a freshwater dip on the rock where he was hiding. The rock only had zoas on it, so a freshwater dip didn't hurt any of the coral, but I'm certain it likely killed all the beneficial bacteria on it ... a small price to pay, however.

This was the culprit. In this photo, it's difficult to see the tentacles.

 

 

About Syllid Worms

 

Here is a great photo I found online of the worms ...

 

 

... and some information from Chuck's Addiction:

The syllids are a large and diverse group of active worms which are mostly found creeping over sponges, ascidians, hydroids, bryozoa and algae or burrowing in the surface layers of silt and are common in protected sandbanks. They pierce the skin of these sedentary animals and pump out the juice. They are common in shallow water forms, and tend to be numerous on hard substrates and soft-bottom sediments.

If you've encountered these worms, best of luck!