What are those?

[Voxon]

Hello, to begin I want to let you know that this is my first venture into SW as I have stuck quite solidly with FW. Despite this my Uncle needed to get rid of his tank and I couldn't help but say no when he said his snail was going to have to die along with all of his live rock. Anyway I have had it for a few weeks and understand everything was well established but on the brink of disaster as he was spending less and less time on the aquarium so I have a serious algae problem along with a rampant case of unidentifiable bristleworms that do not seem to be afraid of the light nor do they appear to be fireworms. Anyway the current thing I am worried/wondering about is what looks to be these weird little coral looking things that have little hairs sticking up from them. They seem to invert whenever I turkey baste the substrate to get all of the algae off of it and come back out a little while later. Pictures attached below, let me know if anyone is up to trying to find out what the bristleworms are. I made them angry but I am willing to bet that they will be back wondering around outside their little caves in the daylight again tomorrow, thanks for helping me out!

 

[Chris_Nicol]

Hello, to begin I want to let you know that this is my first venture into SW as I have stuck quite solidly with FW. Despite this my Uncle needed to get rid of his tank and I couldn't help but say no when he said his snail was going to have to die along with all of his live rock. Anyway I have had it for a few weeks and understand everything was well established but on the brink of disaster as he was spending less and less time on the aquarium so I have a serious algae problem along with a rampant case of unidentifiable bristleworms that do not seem to be afraid of the light nor do they appear to be fireworms. Anyway the current thing I am worried/wondering about is what looks to be these weird little coral looking things that have little hairs sticking up from them. They seem to invert whenever I turkey baste the substrate to get all of the algae off of it and come back out a little while later. Pictures attached below, let me know if anyone is up to trying to find out what the bristleworms are. I made them angry but I am willing to bet that they will be back wondering around outside their little caves in the daylight again tomorrow, thanks for helping me out!

Looks like little filter feeders to me. Do they look like very small feather dusters?

 

[Voxon]

Yeah I wasn’t sure if they were going to get any bigger but they look like feather dusters or a messed up paintbrush.

 

[Sniperhank]

Hard to see. They are either a filter feeding tube worm or hydroids.
One good, one bad.

 

[Voxon]

Hard to see. They are either a filter feeding tube worm or hydroids.
One good, one bad.

Ok... which one is good??? I’m a beginner, tube worm and hydroids both sound bad..

 

[Sniperhank]

Tube worms are great filter feeders.
The hydroids, in the colonial variety, can be one heck of a pest.

 

[bribo12]

Those hydroids don’t really look like the really bad ones to me. See if they spread but I’ve seen those ones come and go b4

 

[Voxon]

Could I blow them off the rock and kill them that way???

 

[Voxon]

Those hydroids don’t really look like the really bad ones to me. See if they spread but I’ve seen those ones come and go b4

Well I looked at them closer and they seem to be coming from these white lines that are slowly covering my live rock. They only seem to be emerging at the end of the white lines and only where there is the max amount of flow in the tank...