Bristle infestation in new setup!

Hi everyone,
I’m about 3 weeks in to a marine setup in a tl550 Boyu, I added about 20kg of live rock from the LFS display tanks and some live sand then left it to cycle.

After the first week i saw a couple of worms and looked on the net, they turned out to be bristle worms, which are apparently good for the tank so I left them.

Week 3 and after a couple of hours with the lights off, I counted roughly 150!!.:-/ I’ve taken a water sample to a LFS and everything was ok so I bought a coral banded shrimp who so far has hidden behind the rock.

I’ve not seen it eat a worm yet but hopefully it will get cracking on them and reduce their numbers. I think I’m going to have to get some long tweezers and do some extracting of the bigger ones if the numbers haven’t reduced in the next few days.. the largest I’ve seen is about 4” long but I’ll have to do it in the dark because within 30 seconds of lights turning on 90% go back in the rocks.

So without any food source as i haven't put anything in to the tank in the 3 weeks what have they been thriving on and how else can i reduce their population?

 

They have been consuming anything that has died on the rock. Their numbers are self limiting by the available food.

Welcome to 3reef.

 

Some wrasses have been known to eat them such as a sixline wrasse.

 

+1 on the population dropping as the food goes away......and on the welcome.

 

two words. Arrow crab.

 

+1....

 

Yep arrow crab but don't feed the tank anything or it will just take the food and ignore the worms. But to be honest with you there really isn't anything wrong with having them, They are part of the reef, they clean up what others leave behind.

 

+1 on the sixline wrase. I had one of these to keep my bristle population in check after I pulled LOTS out by hand. The best way to do it if you are concerned about their numbers in the future is to turn off your light for a few hours until they start coming out. Then you use a flashlight with some red see through something like red plastic wrap taped over the end of it to turn the light red. The idea is that the bristles cannot see the red color of the light, but you can allowing you to illuminate them without causing them to scamper off. I actually teamed up with a family member and had them shine a flashlight through a bottle of fruit punch to give it the red color as I picked the bristles out with some tweezers. Good luck! All and all they are good organisms to have in your tank as long as their numbers do not get out of comtrol.

 

+1 to everyone, thanks

I was going to get one of those but the LFS didn't have one, they told me the shrimp should be almost as good, should i also not feed the shrimp anything so that he goes for the worms or should i give him a little food still? (also what food would you recommend for the shrimp?)

 

My CB Shrimp was not picky at all and once he detected any type of food that I would put into tank he would scury to a high point on my LR and leap around grabbing floating particles out of the water. Frozen prepared foods, Algae strips, the occasional flake food, it didn't matter.