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Hey there, I'm very new to saltwater tanks. The only reason I have one is because my daughters brought a bucket of shells home from the beach in July and as it turns out, 2 had hermit crabs in them 🤦🏼‍♀️ I rushed to petco once we realized and got a 10 gallon tank, some live sand, tank salt and lava rock. I honestly figured the would have died by now, but they've changed shells and molted once already so that's exciting. Tonight I noticed one one crab is out of its shell and hanging on the others shell. Idk if they are fighting or what, but I was taking a video to show my daughters in the morning. That's when I noticed this worm in a tiny shell👀 When I say it's a tiny shell, it's about the width of a pencil. It was also found at the beach, but was left on our counter for a few days before putting it in the tank. This worm, or should I say monster creature, had a very shrimp looking face/head, but the back end looked feathery. I made my 2 mind video into 2 gifs so I could hopefully figure out if it needs to come out or not. Please don't tank shame me, I'm only trying to give these hermits a decent life since they were removed from their home unintentionally! 🙈 Thanks in advance for any help!

EDIT: Thank you for the feedback! I now have a better working idea on annelid care/environments. Howdy all, thank you in advance for advice. I've started my first reef tank (30G flex box set) and I'm presently monitoring the first cycle. I have live sand, baked rock and one wet live from my reputable aqua store (about one fourth rock is live? By weight?) I'm a very slow going person, so I'm not in a rush. I'm enjoying the process. Though I'm at the point where I'd like some planning advice for the end goal, tube worm paradise. Atleast, I think I want that. I've been looking at corals for Christmas tree worms primarily, but I'm an absolute newbie and the more I read the less.. prepared I feel. Very open to species suggestions. So. Any advice for the order of operations here? I don't plan to add anything for atleast another two weeks. -Is clean up crew necessary for a filter feeder tank? -Corals first? -Shrimp will eat tube worms ?? -Best choices for first additions to establish a healthy ecosystem? Thank you!

HOW I STARTED MY FIRST SALTWATER TANK Hello! And welcome to my first ever saltwater tank! I chose a 29G tank because it fit perfectly in my home office. I'll list more information about my tank specs at the bottom on this thread, so feel free to skip ahead if you don't need to learn from my very n00b mistakes 😄 TANK AGE: I started my tank Mar 10 2021, and added fish pretty quickly since I used both live rock and water from a local aquarium shop that did my tank installation & setup. Everything on the tests were fine, and correct bacteria dosage was added as a precautionary supplement. Tank status the morning before the first TEV: 2 juvenile Black Snowflake Clowns (was trying to pair, different sizes), 1 Sailfin Tang, 1 Green Polyp XS TANK TEVS (tank events) 1. The Seaweed Mishap I knew Tangs liked seaweed. I gave my tang Cheese a little too much seaweed. He tore it apart and it got everywhere. I didn't know what to do. I grew up in Monterey, CA. Seaweed is everywhere. Everything seemed fine. But no, this was dried seaweed. And you're not supposed to leave it in for more than 2-3 hours (I think don't trust me on this pls). This messed with my nitrate levels pretty bad. I really wanted to add another coral to my tank. I was TOO EAGER. 2. The Maintenance Day of Doom Oh boy was I so unaware of what was yet to come. I brought water to be tested at my other local fish store so that I knew it was safe to buy a coral. They told me I needed water changes. CHANGES yes, I too almost underestimated how many changes I was going to need. But more on that later, lets first start with my first ever water change. I drained 20% of the water, then added in ROI (is that the acronym? I'm hard of hearing and its so hard to hear the employees at the shop when they speak through their mask) water and to dilute the salinity and some of the nitrates. I let it run for ~ 1 hour to let all that "good-good" mix around with the water. Then I drained the tank again 50% and added more water. But I was foolish and did it by myself. And didn't use my hand. The water splashed....everywhere...it was so cloudy.. 3. Death Roe The unenthusiastic clownfish that was forced to become the male died first. He was weak because they were fighting for their first day (a couple weeks prior). A day later the female clown died. My Tang then came down with really bad ich. He died the next day as well. My Green Polyp was the only guy to survive. 3 water changes and 1 week later, I added 2 blue chromis to get some poop in there... but they died. It is because I bought them at petsmart. It was a bad batch. Don't recommend. Since then, I upgraded the filter, heater, thermometer, protein skimmer, and light. So it is basically like a brand new tank. Most of the gear is controlled by wifi automatically I love it so much. It is so worth the money if you want a low stress tank. I also got some really healthy live rock teaming with all kinds of healthy organisms from another local aquarium shop. My new fully paired clownfish are also doing very well. I have another cool coral frag that I will share about later. There is a BUNCH of tank drama around this coral at night. It is so fun to watch! Don't worry all this "drama" is literally just an ecosystem with a food chain. In the ocean, each species has its own way of protecting itself, and thats no different in this tank! The fish stay out of it, and the coral benefit from the organisms fighting over the seaweed. TODO: I will get to this things soon! It is night and I do not want to disturb my tank's auto light schedule. - Add images of tank and equipment setup - Add images of wildlife in tank - Add specs of gear - Add image of completed home office Please tag along for my journey or learn from it so no more fish are lost.

I have a video LSS: I cleaned my bedroom nano tank of algae, with a water change and in the morning I found this interesting lil guy. Idk what it is, has anyone else ever seen one. Any identification?

Is it a bristle worm ? I looked up online and could only ever find other colored worms not one similar to this ...

I have a saltwater ecosphere and have been unable to find identification resources for this little guy. Any ideas?

Hello there! Long time lurker and first time posting, I found these two long white worms in my tank and was wondering if they're harmful or harmless. They're about 5/6 inches long and after looking through the ID threads I couldn't figure out what these were. some tank details, 10 gallon has been up for about a month and a half now, last new additions were fish two weeks ago, and I used mostly dry rock with a piece of lr from the lfs to start it up Thank you!

can someone help ID what this is? thanks its appeared in my canal ecosphere and i want to look into it, it seems to be able to stretch very far and moves like a slug as shown towards the end of the video many thanks, luke link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CcU2EOsYI4&feature=youtu.be

I recently got a coco worm (Protula bispiralis) from my LFS. They convinced me that it’s easy to care for them and so I bought it. After doing more research I realized I really shouldn’t have bought it, as my tank is new and I’m relatively inexperienced. I’m wondering if any of you have experience caring for coco worms, specifically protula bispiralis, and if so, could you let me know? If you know anyone else who has cared for them, could you tag them in this post? I’d love to have a few people that I could contact and ask if (and when) I run into problems with my worm. My care regiment for it it has been feeding two or three times a week with either reef roids or two little fishies marine snow. I do weekly water changes, sometimes bi weekly. It seemed pretty happy for the first few days I had it, but now I find that it’s retracted about ~50% of the time that I see it (it’s possible that it’s out much more often than that, I’m just basing that number on when I walk by/look at the tank).

I don't have any pictures as I was lucky enough just to spot the bugger, but a small reddish-tannish worm, with no apparent bristles and no large head antennae I could see, slowly came out of the rock a newly purchased mushroom coral came in on. It extended some small mandibles and tore a big enough chunk out of the baby-mushroom to literally tear its' disk. The mushroom is now dead, but I guess I was wondering if any other folks had similar experiences with such animals, it was very thin and quite small still, nothing like the eunice worms you typically hear about and it went after the mushroom in the afternoon, so it wouldn't appear to be nocturnal either. The main reason I ask is that I initially tried to get rid of it just by cutting the half of the rock I spotted it on off entirely, in hindsight however I'm not sure whether that would have been enough since the animal could have been multiple inches long and retraced far into the center of the rock (though I didn't see any tubes for it after cutting the rock [rock is also generous, we're talking an inch, maybe two inch pebble here and a tiny-baby-shroom] may have seen parts of a dead shriveled worm in the rock a few days later, impossible to tell?) So I guess my question would be, what're the chances it bailed into my rockwork after I disturbed its' home by cutting the rock, and I'll now have a nibbling-rampage to track (one of my euphyllia is going bailout atm actually with tears in its' flesh, so this might already be the case), or would these kinds of worms likely just sit put in their burrow and I likely either got rid of it when disposing of the shroom's corpse or when I actively tried to cut its' home off the pebble. Probably inappropriate for this forum, but I just don't have enough hands-on experience to really have an answer for myself on this one, and I can't find too much information out there either.

Hey all - I've been scouring the internet to try to find an ID on this worm and an answer as to what could be wrong with my YCG's tail fin. As of yesterday, the YCG's fin was perfectly fine, but when I came in this am there seemed to be some damage. The Zoa polyps I have in the tank have also been closed for most of the day and have been open and happy since I added them to the tank last week. I spotted this worm (?!?) prior to the lights coming on and need an ID so I can properly treat the fish/take steps to remove it from the tank.

i found this worm its really tiny about less than 2 inches which is too small right now to cause much harm so i will ask now i uploaded a photo its mostly grey-black with a bit of a grey-orange stripe what is it? should i remove it? and what should i do if i need to remove it? and is it safe with inverts?

Was able to get a decent shot of this tiny creature on my glass using a magnifying glass. Anyone seen one of those or know what it is? Looks like it has a bunch of legs

Im interested to see if anyone has any "pest" or hardy anemones that will stay small and be suitable for a pico. I came across this video and it looks like exactly what Im looking for. Apparently its a Aiptasia Mutabilis but when you look it up, they don't look nearly as good as it does in that video. I won't be ready to purchase one immediately, Im just interested to see if anyone has anemones they are willing to sell that look similar to the one in the video and/or are equally as hardy and beautiful. Thanks Edit: or Aiptasia Pallida Bartholomea annulata Arachnanthus nocturnus

I have been noticing these small worms the size of copepods but longer..... Should I be worried or hold off on adding livestock? Thank you in advance for any information or advice :)

hi, I was just doing a water change and as I was gravel vac-ing I noticed something go up, and as I checked my bucket water I see this little reddish transparent worm. I'm freaking out because I don't know what it is? is it a bristleworm? is it good or bad? as I look through that same area I keep finding them. I think I found like 6 or 7 total. I'm keeping them in a little container until I find out if they're good or bad. some were big like around 1 inch long and then some were smaller like babies. please let me know what to do with these. even if they are bad I would feel so bad killing an innocent creature 😞 I know, call me stupid. thanks in advance.

Can anyone tell me what this is. I just saw it in my tank, a worm with tentacles on its head and was able to siphon it out

I have these small white dots all over my glass and was looking at them through a magnify glass I have. Anyone know what they could be? I also have what appears to be detritus worms and I can actually see them eating algae on the glass when I use my magnifier. Also when I first turn my lights on it’s super cloudy in the tank then clears up after about an hour not sure what that’s all about

Is this a red tube or fan worm? It's on the underside of my open brain coral. Appears to be two of them. I believe I also have one on the stalk of my hammer coral. The "plume" or "fan" is a pretty bright red, although it's hard to see that from the photos. Are these harmful? If so, how do I get rid of them? Thank you!