Sea Millipede???

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JackBNimble

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May 24, 2005
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San Diego, CA
Over the weekend I acquired a 55 gallon fish tank from a friend of mine (he is moving to the east coast due to health complications and cannot bring the tank). It came with a couple of fish and some invertebrates. However, due to my friends dementia, he was unable to tell me what was in the tank, and I don't think he even realized that he had a tank (Not really the main issue).

Now that I have transported and am setting up this tank in my house, I am wondering just what I got. I have been fairly successful in identifying everything else except for this one thing. I don't have any :kewlpics: since as soon as I put it in the tank, it hid behind the rock wall and I probably wont ever see it again, until I empty the tank again. His daughter said that he never bought the thing, but it emerged when he added some live rock.

The thing is long - about 8 inches at normal length, but it can shrink back down to just a couple of inches, and stretch out even longer (made it very interesting to catch). It is dark grey, and has about 100 - 150 little legs (which may have had a reddish tinge). It looks like each set of legs are attached to a separate piece of exoskeleton or something. There is no discernable head, but one end moved around a bit more than the other. It looked sort of like an earthworm, but with legs and scales.

I'm not expecting any actual identification, since there are no pictures for you to look at, I just was wondering what type of creatures I should be looking for. Sort of a point in the right direction. I have spent the last three days of looking through the internet without any luck, and I don't like having a mystery creature that has the possibility of being toxic to me, or something.
 
Sounds like a bristleworm of some sort. Somewhat controversial, but becoming less so. Some say they're a danger to corals but the general thinking is that they do more good than harm in most tanks.
 
Yes - that is what it looks like.

It's probably a good thing that I wont see it for a while - not the most attractive creature in the sea - but interesting.

Thank you so much for the help - I feel complete now.
 

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