Guy Had No Idea This Enormous Bristle Worm Was Living in His Fish Tank

How could anyone go two years without noticing something this Brobdingnagian ? Well , humans have been around for 200,000 . Bristle insect and their polychaete brothers have survivedfive mass extinctions .

Many aquarists fill their armored combat vehicle with alive rock , i.e. lump of coral that still harbor biological and bacterial matter . Bristle wrestle often piggyback on these corals , infiltrating a tank and growing to marvellous size of it . Generally they remain hidden beneath rocks and coral , stab out at nighttime to course .

Some mass pick out not to get disembarrass of them . On the one hand , they ’re pack rat who clean detritus and generally do n’t bother Pisces ( although they can eat coral if they ’re do-or-die ) . On the other mitt , their petite spines make them painful to handle — another aquarist described the feeling asanalogous to fiberglass — and therefore hard to take away . In this case , the worm grew to almost four feet foresighted and drain the full tank car was the only way to get rid of it .