VIDEO: Enormous Creature Discovered in Man’s Fish Tank

This man decided to move his fish tank and discovered something unbelievable living inside. While he was breaking down the tank, he noticed a whole coral colony went missing after a single night. The culprit ? A giant bristle/eunice worm that measured almost 4 feet (1.2m) in length!

Read the full story below, provided by Reshareworthy.

After 2 years, a man decided to move his fish tank and discovered something incredible living inside. While he was at work breaking down his tank he noticed a whole coral colony went missing after a single night. Curious to find the culprit he stayed up to look for it.

“I first saw it after I spent a few nights sat up…for about 3 hours per night looking for the critter who was eating my corals,” wrote the videographer. What was it? It was a giant bristle /eunice worm! The polychaetes often piggyback into saltwater tanks on corals where they then grow, often undetected by the aquarist. The worm in this man’s tank measured almost 4 feet (1.2m) long!

The bristle worm is pretty elusive and an expert in disguise. “Even when I knew it was there, I only ever saw it 3 times within the space of a year,” the man wrote. “It hides in the rocks, and only comes out at night, impossible to catch without taking everything out the tank.”

Bristle worms tend to scavenge and clean debris if they live in a tank, but they’ll eat coral if they are really hungry. The sea creatures date back to prehistoric times. Wow, imagine finding one in your tank!

Here is a more detailed description of a bristle worm, provided by Wikipedia.

Polychaetes are segmented worms, generally less than 10 cm (3.9 in) in length, although ranging at the extremes from 1 mm (0.039 in) to 3 m (9.8 ft). They can sometimes be brightly coloured, and may be iridescent or even luminescent. Each segment bears a pair of paddle-like and highly vascularized parapodia, which are used for movement and, in many species, act as the worm’s primary respiratory surfaces. Bundles of bristles, called setae, project from the parapodia.

However, polychaetes vary widely from this generalised pattern, and can display a range of different body forms. The most generalised polychaetes are those that crawl along the bottom, but others have adapted to many different ecological niches, including burrowing, swimming, pelagic life, tube-dwelling or boring, commensalism, and parasitism, requiring various modifications to their body structures.

The head, or prostomium, is relatively well developed, compared with other annelids. It projects forward over the mouth, which therefore lies on the animal’s underside. The head normally includes two to four pair of eyes, although some species are blind. These are typically fairly simple structures, capable of distinguishing only light and dark, although some species have large eyes with lenses that may be capable of more sophisticated vision.

The head also includes a pair of antennae, tentacle-like palps, and a pair of pits lined with cilia, known as “nuchal organs”. These latter appear to be chemoreceptors, and help the worm to seek out food.

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