Giant worms!

[Bifferwine]

I have a 55 gallon tank that (used) to have some soft corals (but they disappeared overnight five months ago), so since then it has had 14 fish some crabs and snails, until yesterday, when the blue gudgeon goby didn't come out to eat.

So today when I got home from work I started poking around looking for him, saw a giant 8 inch long bristle worm about as thick as my pinkie in one of the live rocks, and called my LFS. They recommended putting the rock in fresh water to kill the worm, and look through the rest of my (100 lbs of) rock. So I had to take out all of my fish, I put them in my 10 gallon quarantine tank because I was stirring up so much gunk in the tank and was afraid of dropping rocks on them, and I laid out all the rocks on my dining room floor (yikes!), and found one other one, about 6 inches long. There were a few little ones in the substrate, but I didn't bother with those, I figured my six lined wrasse would take care of them if he saw them... Now everyone is back in the big tank (as are the rocks). Finally, the question: Did I do the right thing? If I find more worms in there, should I do the same thing or just leave the worms there, is the stress to my fish due to being moved back and forth not worth getting the worms out?? :question:

By the way, I never did find my blue gudgeon goby, he had disappeared just like the corals, thanks to the worms probably.

Thanks,
Sarah

 

[jhnrb]

Most likely what you had found is a fire worm or two. they can get quite large, I removed one from my last system at 14". in the future try a nylon knee high with no sents or impregnated stuff and use a small piece of bait say squid or some thing smelly, not much though, put in just before lights out and near where the worm is observed, in morning hopfully the worm tried to get at the bait and is hung up in the nylon and you remove all to waste can. now on the bigger worms might not work all the time but at least worth a try before tearing down your system.

 

[minireefer]

Also if you can get them before they retreat back in the rock try some needle nose plies I got a couple out this way

 

[ReefWannabe]

Ive heard of people using a turkey baster with boiled water and they shoot it into the rocks where the crab/bug is hiding. It should kill them. We did this in my cousins tank about a week ago for a huge fireworm. Found him the next day being eatin by hermits and the cleaner shrimp.