Star Polyps + Bristleworms = trouble?

[montoya]

Buried in a previous thread I mentioned my Star Polyp colony suddenly closed. Unfortunately it has been about 4 days now with no signs of them coming back out.

Anyway I was staring at my tank a short time ago lamenting the fact that I have nothing but crappy luck with polyps of any kind. It helps my self esteem further when I read about how super hardy and easy polyps are and how they will soon be taking over my tank.

As I was leaving my beautiful reef to go upstairs and grab a cold one :Cheers: to drown my sorrows I spotted what I believe is a bristleworm poking out from in between a couple of the closed polyps. It looked mostly tan in color with snow white bristles. It was tiny by worm standards - maybe a 1/8" or less in diameter and only sticking out 1/4" or so. It seemed in no hurry to go anywhere so I sprinted upstairs to grab a tweezer. I was hoping to be able to nab it but by the time I got back to my tank it was no where to be seen.

I'm probably asking the obvious but do you think a work crawling around the colony is what is keeping it closed? It seems probable - but on the other hand if a colony like this in nature closed up for days every time something crawled on it or touched it you would think they would perish.

I have a little worm trap already fashioned up. I may try to capture the little bugger this weekend.

 

[yote]

Well,That is something else to think about.
99.9% of the bristle worms that make their way into our tanks are safe and mainly feed on detritus and scavenge for food.BUT,for the million or so species that are safe,there are 1 or 2 that are coral predators.

 

[Bifferwine]

Bristleworms are some of the best members of your cleaning crew. They are excellent at keeping the sand and rocks clean. I doubt it's the bristleworm irritating the coral, they usually spend most of their time cruising the substrate.

 

[dcantucson]

It is probably a safe Bristle worm and not a predator. Star polyps are notorious for closing up for days at a time for no reason.

 

[montoya]

I'll keep an eye on them and ignore the worm for now. I'm a a skeptic because my first ever colony of polyps (common brown "button" polyps) did well for a month or so then closed up for a year and a half - no exageration. They didn't die off - they just stayed closed. Just in the past two months or so they have started to open slightly each day but not much. Someone gave me a nice colony of polyps or zoas (I don't know how to tell the difference) about a year ago. They are doing just ok - they open but not a hint of growth or spreading after a year. I had a colony of yellow polyps that stayed healthy for a month or two then slowly deteriorated to nothing. I have several varieties of mushrooms that are growing and spreading like nuts. A colt coral that is growing and has split several times, my bubble coral tripled in size, Xenia spreading everywhere... I just can't keep star ployps. Hopefully like everyone says my star polyps are just taking a break and will open again soon.

 

[Bifferwine]

Have you tried dipping them? You may have a zoanthid predator in your tank and not know it.

 

[parrotchute]

Yeah I doubt it's the bristleworms - I have a massive gsp colony that mats over a very porous rock that is absolutely infested with bristleworms.

GSP is my tank won't even close up if hermits walk on it - but if there's a chemical change in my tank (especially pH buffer), they get very upset. Temperature also seems to affect them pretty quick-like.

 

[montoya]

Thanks everyone. Biff - I might try a dip if things don't improve over the weekend. It does seem odd that only polyps seem to have issues in my tank. To parrotchute's point about water chemistry - during my routine maintenance this morning I did find that my salinity had shot up to 1.028. Not sure why. I monitor it several times a week and long term it has always been very stable. I brought it down to a hair under 1.026. I will see if that improves things for the star polyps.

 

[Hiker4twenty]

Latching onto this thread. In my fuge I have 20 or so bristle worms that I've seen. I know there are much more in there. Can I have too many in the fuge? I know they're good at cleaning up and are beneficial to the system.

 

[Melosu58]

I have several bristle worms and never had any problem.

 

[dcantucson]

Latching onto this thread. In my fuge I have 20 or so bristle worms that I've seen. I know there are much more in there. Can I have too many in the fuge? I know they're good at cleaning up and are beneficial to the system.

I think your system will dictate how many you have. If there's enough for them to survive then they will. The amount of them will vary depending of their food source.

 

[montoya]

I've got improvement - about 1/2 my star polyp colony is partially open this afternoon. Not sure if the high salinity was the culprit or if it was just coincidence in timing.