worm id help?

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mercedes

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 18, 2008
Messages
128
Location
Ames Lake, WA
we are about 6 months in and thought we had encountered all the creepy crawlies hitchhiking on our live rock, but to our surprise this guy popped up and have had trouble identifying him. any ideas? he didn't venture far from the crevice he came out of. your help is greatly appreciated. thanks in advance!

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Ok I got a e-mail from Les. She may pay us a visit. My second guess was correct a Syllid.
Les gave this additional info.

It could be one of the specialized predators on Xenia so the person who has it should catch it (and then send it to me).

SHE WANTS YOUR WORM :D
 
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thank you! thank you! wow! it def is a xenia chomping syllid. i failed to mention we had lost a newly acquired bunch of blue/silver xenia + recently had an incident where our pink pom-poms were thrashed to bits. we had attributed the loss to a rogue crab, but this makes much more sense. it's def bad and is coming out. i'll let you all know if and when we catch it. thanks again!

i found an pdf article w/ more information on this particular critter:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&star...2KnwDg&usg=AFQjCNHxhbTi8aEZUJuO_-umfp9f4-OKVw
 
Hmm that is good to know, please tell Leslie thank you for the help. If she is in the Seattle area we would gladly hand over the worm when\if we catch it alive.

I would also be curious to find out if these worms are predatory toward other corals. We have been having a problem the past two months with corals being eaten. We have a rogue Xanthid crab that we so far have been unable to catch that we've been blaming the problem on.

The casualty list is:
2" blue Ricordea slowly eaten over the course of a month.
Small blue Zoanthid polyps disappearing.
One Acan that had been partially eaten.
Most recently something has been munching on our Xenia.

It sounds like the culprit for the Xenia damage is this worm but I wonder if he is also the guy to blame for our other coral damage.
 
Leslie and her worms!!! LOL. Seems I remember her having someone else ship her an unusual worm and if Formaldehyde wasn't available, suggested using vodka. Hope she isn't drinking it afterwards!!! To be honest, I'd be half afraid to try and catch that thing!! Looks evil!!! Will stay tuned to see what she says!!!
 
Did a little more reading on Syllids and came up with good and bad news.

Good news
Syllids reproduce sexually. Hopefully this is the only one we have in our little 15 gallon tank and won't soon be overrun with them like the common asexually reproducing polychaete bristleworms we have.

Bad news
Quoted from the article Mercedes linked "Similar species of Syllid worm exist with this basic body plan and are known to consume a variety of soft coral species." So it sounds possible that this worm is the thing that has been chomping on our soft corals for the past two months.
 
how do you propose we catch it? sounds like it has teeth so i'm a little weary of sticking my hands in the tank.
 
Usually these syllids have one very small tooth, sometimes more, but always so small that they can't penetrate your skin. Typical feeding behavior for syllids is to puncture the outer skin & suck out a bit of the coelomic fluid & then move on without doing any real damage. A few tend to stay longer in one place & fall into two feeding categories. The first one - which seems to hold most of these species - are grazers which feed on detritus, bacteria, dead cells, etc., living on their hosts which might be sponges or corals. The second group are those few species which actively eat their hosts by sucking in the soft flesh much like a person might eat a frozen yogurt cone. The trade-off for the host is that the worms will defend them against predators like nudibranchs and sea stars. In nature even the worms that directly eat their hosts probably don't do much damage but in the confines of an aquarium they can.

Boomer was right - I want your worm if you can catch it. There's very little real information on which worms eat which corals so I'd like to identify this one.
 
I meant to add that it sounds like there's probably more than one predator in your tank. What you've listed is too much damage for one worm, even one very very hungry one.

More bad news is that many syllids alternate sexual & asexual reproduction. Here's hoping the one you saw belongs to the generation that needs a mate!
 
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