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Eunice worm


dsoz

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So I have this pink hammer coral that started showing damage this last weekend. It started getting brown jelly on one side of it. It looked like something was eating/stinging/attacking that side. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on with it.

 

I figured it out tonight. There is a eunice worm in the rock, and the hole that the hammer was stuck into. I watched the worm sniff through the hammer coral, and look for food to steal from the mouth. It tore right through the flesh to get to the inside. No wonder the hammer is being destroyed.

 

To add insult to injury, it is a large piece of rock that supposedly came from Steve Weast's tank take-down. I am at least the third person that this particular rock has traveled to in it's journey.

 

Now I just gotta figure out how to get the sucker out of the rock. I am thinking taking everything off the rock, and the rock out of the tank. Then into a freshwater dip for a few minutes to see if the bugger comes out of it's hole. If not then it will be plan B.

 

I don't have pics because I didn't have my camera handy, and it was too fast. But I did get a good look at it. YUCK!

 

Wish me luck.

 

dsoz

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oh you guys cause me trouble... I have a candy cane head and a green monti that have the brown slime as you describe. I know I have at least one of these little worms somewhere also. He is only 3" or so but I moved my rock around. I have no clue what rock it was. (gets flashlight for the nightshift)DOH!

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If you can remove the rock, instead of doing a fresh water dip, try dipping the rock in a salinity of 1.040 for about ten minutes. Use a powerhead for aeration (doesn't work without the powerhead). IME the worms will actually run out of the rock within the first few minutes, but ten minutes is more then safe IME.

 

When I found my worm, I went ahead and dipped all of my rock this way. Found hundreds of bristle worms, but only one long eunice worm.

 

The best part of the hyper dip is that while the worms flee, you don't kill your rock.

 

JME HTH

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I killed one with 60 degree water once. Was a huge worm about 14-16" long. Problem is it fell apart as I began to pull its shrivled body out of the rock. Had to put the rock in a bucket with a powerhead and several water changes before I could get all of the worm out of the rock. Stunk to high heaven but was well worth it. Nasty buggers.

 

 

Garrett

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  • 4 weeks later...

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