Bristle Worm Question?

[Thumper]

For the last month my mushrooms have been poor looking, Found their to be a bristle worm hiding in the rock with my mushrooms and today discovered this $&*@$%@ has been munching on my shrooms. After I saw this i looked closer to find the reason they have been poor looking. He's eaten parts off of all of them. I'm pretty sure where he 's at and I can remove the entire rock but it has shrooms on it, HOW DO I GET THE SOB OUT without harming my corals. I will execute the little varmint when found............... HELP

 

[Phyl]

We had the same problem with our bristle worm. Shame too because he was so cool looking, but not worth my favorite shrooms! My hubby caught the bugger in the act and yanked him out by scooping him up with a skewer, if I'm not mistaken. He said he had to pull him off of the shroom he had such a hold on it. The shroom has a small scar where the bristle got him, but has otherwise flourished.

If he's *in* the rock maybe you can pull the rock and squirt the hole with fresh water. The shrooms wouldn't be out of the water very long and the worm should wither from the fresh water. The rocks I've pulled have never had anything more than coraline and spaghetti worms on them so I just pulled the rock, hit it with FW (over a bowl) and then put the rock back into the tank. Just keep the shrooms out of the fresh water.

I was going to keep mine in my fuge, but now that my QT has had ich I'm not interested in moving any of the old inhabitants (couple of crabs, worms and snails) to my fuge!

Good luck. I feel your pain!