This jerk killed a few of my fish and I suspect some of the invertebrates in the tank. Never actually saw it kill anything but they'd be healthy one day and dead/gone the next so its likely\possible.
Anyway I wanted to let people know what finally worked and what didn't work since there's a lot of posts out there where people have bobbit worms, things are suggested, and there is never a follow up to explain what worked.
I might have been "lucky" in that my bobbit worm never seemed to be in any holes in the rock work. It seemed to always be in the sand with its antennae poking out of several holes it had created. It would occasionally move its holes around too.
What didn't work:
All of the methods below I tried at night since that was the only time it would come out. A red light on a headlamp didnt scare it and in fact waving the headlamp around seemed to lure it out.
Bottle trap & bottle trap + shopvac attached:
Capturing with tongs
So since i knew roughly what half of the tank it was on and it was only ever in the sand or under rocks my idea was to:
There's a bonus bristle worm that I found first under a rock and wasnt sure if it was it. Obviously it wasn't it as you can see.
Anyway I wanted to let people know what finally worked and what didn't work since there's a lot of posts out there where people have bobbit worms, things are suggested, and there is never a follow up to explain what worked.
I might have been "lucky" in that my bobbit worm never seemed to be in any holes in the rock work. It seemed to always be in the sand with its antennae poking out of several holes it had created. It would occasionally move its holes around too.
What didn't work:
All of the methods below I tried at night since that was the only time it would come out. A red light on a headlamp didnt scare it and in fact waving the headlamp around seemed to lure it out.
Bottle trap & bottle trap + shopvac attached:
- I used a smart water bottle, cut the top off and inverted it into the bottle. I used electrical tape to seal this up.
- I put a raw shrimp inside. The only thing I ever caught was snails.
- I tried a variation where I used the cut off top of one smart water bottle, cut the end off another bottle, and put the cut-off top in the bottom. The exposed mouth of the water bottle I put into a shopvac hose and wrapped it all in electrical tape. The idea being that I could lure the bobbit worm into the bottle and when he was far enough in then suck it out. Didn't work, bobbit worm didn't care at all and didn't leave its hole more than a couple inches.
Capturing with tongs
- Turned off the front powerheads and let a raw shrimp sit on the sand about 6 inches out from its hole. Lots of snails and hermit crabs came to investigate. The bobbit worm either liked the shrimp or the movement from the snails\hermits and came a good 5 inches or so out its hole. I tried grabbing it with tongs, made contact with it but it was able to pull free. Larger hemostats or more powerful tongs might have worked.
- Same as the "Capturing with tongs" method above (live shrimp on sand about 6 inches out from its hole). It got about 5 inches out and turned on the shop vac right above it. It got sucked upward briefly and then darted back into its hole.
So since i knew roughly what half of the tank it was on and it was only ever in the sand or under rocks my idea was to:
- Slowly remove the rock from the half of the tank it was on while having a second person watch to see any movement. They never saw the worm.
- Once all the rock was removed from the half of the tank it was on, ensure all the fish end up on the other half of the tank where it isn't.
- Use a large piece of plexiglass\acrylic to block off the two halves of the tank. The acrylic sheet was 28"x30" and my tank is a Red Sea 650G2...about 24" deep). The sheet should be pushed all the way down into your sand and to the bottom of the tank, hopefully blocking any path for it in the sand to the "safe" half of the tank.
- Now assuming it didn't dart or burrow or do anything weird I was confident it was in one half of the tank where all I had was sand.
- Note: This picture has the rock in the bad half because I forgot to take a photo before I added the rock back in.
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- Using a scrapper or shovel of some sort, clear out the sand near the plexiglass, this way you can see if it moves out from the sand. Mine didn't but that was the idea.
- Using a spider whisk (I got mine at an Asian grocery store) or a similar sifting tool, start sifting through the sand and move the sand as you do the far side of the tank (away from the acrylic). Here's the spider whisk I used, it was about 18" in diameter:
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- It took about a dozen scoops and I finally had it captured in one of the scoops of sand.
There's a bonus bristle worm that I found first under a rock and wasnt sure if it was it. Obviously it wasn't it as you can see.
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