Spaghetti Worms!?

[Orvin Farmer]

Are spaghetti Worms good or bad? They are good, right? They help clean up waist and sift the sand, correct? (I hope) now, for the big question for the day...

Does anybody know what they look like in the infantile stage of their life? Do they look like little tiny red slugs, including what looks like to be antenna, or feelers, like the slugs/snails? Or if this is not what they look like, then does anybody have a clue about what I have discribed above...I mean fire-engine red!!!??
I have these things all over the place, on the rocks on the bases of my lps corals everywhere...in the sump they are on the calerpa...etc. Help!!!??? Size is about 1 to 1.5mm, I am talking tiny! Magnifying tiny!
If I could get a pic of these guys I sould submit one. But, the modern day technology wants to focus on everything but what I want..lol

[BoomerD]

Uh-Oh, sounds like red flatworms to me...definitely not good! Someone else will have to chime in about controlling them, I only know about a product called flatworm exit. Not even sure anymore how to best use it.

[Cougra]

Speghetti worms are good.

The red slug like things you are discribing sounds a lot like planaria AKA flatworms to me. Those guys are a nusence and are generally found in tanks that are being over fed or high in nutrients.

[Orvin Farmer]

I have seen pics of the red flat worms...this does not look like them. I will have to say you got me investigating these and nudibranch...and cane accross a wonderful site, Slugsite.us This has some great info on it. What I am talking about is something that looks just like the Berthellina edwards nudibranch...
http://slugsite.us/bow/wirtz99/plate_2/wirtz_1m.htm

[RogueCorps]

The difference between flatworms and nudibranchs is that flatworms have no visible rhinophores or antennae. According to Calfo there is one species of flatworm with extensions that look like rhinophores but aren't.
[IMG]http://rds.yahoo.com/S=96062883/K=nudibranch+anatomy/v=2/l=IVS/*-[/IMG]
Image from: http://www.pictonb.freeserve.co.uk/n...s/anatomy.html

In either case I don't think you've got a population of desireable animals. If they are flatworms they are known to grow to epidemic proportions and should be siphoned off to keep them in check. A large population of baby nudibranchs also sounds like a bad thing since once they deplete their food source a population crash could cause problems.

-R

[Orvin Farmer]

Thank you RogueCorps, I guess the most puzzleing thing is that these little red spots, critters do not seem to grow in size that I have noticed. That is why I was wondering if they where the first stages of spagetti worms...I do have a few of those in my tank...seems to be getting more and more every day.

[RogueCorps]

Hmm... yeah, I'm not sure Orvin. Under a microscope the spaghetti worms that I've seen just look like small spaghetti worms. These could just be a smaller type though. I've also seen a giant spaghetti worm who's tentacles actually were the size of pasta spaghetti at the Waikiki Aquarium.

When moving around they'll look just like a thin worm or sometimes you can see the tentacles trailing behind the head like a mane.

The fact that you said that they're covering so many surfaces makes me think that they're flatworms. Spaghetti worms are hardly ever out of a hole in live rock or in substrate. The flatworms that I've seen are split-tailed like a chevron shape, reddish brown with a slightly lighter head and Anthony Calfo said that in Europe almost all flatworms in tanks there are pumpkin shaped. I hope they're not though.

-Rogue

[Tarasco]

Here's a good article on spaghetti worms, pics and diagrams near the bottom:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/rs/index.htm

If you do have flatworms, I had some for a while when I first set up my reef. Tried a couple of things, none of them worked. Then, when I just said "screw it," they slowly started dwindling. I haven't seen any in about 10 months. No idea why.