Propagation tube worms

From a collecting trip a few months back i got a few tube worms of the millions we see and I cut off a small section off each varied colour types.

I have done this many times over quite a few years, before passing them back to the guys to make more from those sections.

Only when I have time, this is labour intensive with feeding to get them up and growing really fast.

Plus the foods I make for the raising of them is a huge phos level builder in the system they are in, so it’s them and only them.

No corals can exist in the level of phos from their needed feeding types of foods and amounts.

Tubeworms are A sexual and sexual so they are extremely easy to get to multiply.

They can be a pain and block systems externally with out settling pre filters, when they decide to breed sexually by one sex releasing and the other picks up on this and releases as well to mix in the waters as the eggs and sperm move along, in a decent current normally.

I have had systems shut down from these little beggars as the youngsters fill the good flow sections of external bio filtration.

In the top tank they are all over the place in all sections from where the water leaves that tank until after the settling pre filters, they don’t make it past them; if they did I would have a huge problem.

The pics that follow are of the youngsters now in the main tank as of yesterday and the next are some that have been in for ages.

There are many peps in the tanks and will not do not allow A sexual multiplying for the tube worms, which I don’t mind or they can tend to take over.

The first pic shows once the youngsters have gotten big enough, I slow the feeding and the feather duster aspect of them becomes extremely fine and broad to pick up now rare foods.

This will go and they will seem the same as the others in the tanks in time due to my feeding of my display tanks at many times per day.

Plus the head-feather duster on these youngsters will shrink with so much food available.

Two months old



Over a year old.