[k9anna]

In my 55 gal reef tank everything was going fine I got 2 new fish and still all was fine then all of a sudden some of the fish seemed sick swiming around crazy and gasping for breath and died. I lost 5 fish I treated the tank with a med. called focus and it seemed to save the rest of the fish.
ok last night I see this little guy about 1 inch long and man do i mean fast swiming around like mad I caught him and placed him in a jar and wondered if this was part of what killed everyone.
he has kinda a black tip on his head with what appears to be a sucker white head and a red body

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by k9anna

In my 55 gal reef tank everything was going fine I got 2 new fish and still all was fine then all of a sudden some of the fish seemed sick swiming around crazy and gasping for breath and died. I lost 5 fish I treated the tank with a med. called focus and it seemed to save the rest of the fish.
ok last night I see this little guy about 1 inch long and man do i mean fast swiming around like mad I caught him and placed him in a jar and wondered if this was part of what killed everyone.
he has kinda a black tip on his head with what appears to be a sucker white head and a red body

Hi k9anna,

I saw your thread this morning but could not respond earlier as I was real busy with my granddaughter plus, I was not sure what type of annelid this worm was. So, I had email your picture to a much more knowledgeable person(Dr.Ron) and here's the ID that I had recieved:
"The worm appears to possibly be a Nephthys. These live in sediments and are predatory on other worms. They would not have poisoned the aquarist's fish. As far as I know, no annelid (bristle) worm could have released poisons that did what he/you described."

Now that we know what type of worm this is, let me ask you this- what other critters you have in your tank,mainly I'm interested if you have a sea cucumber or what types of soft corals you keeping. From the description of the fish behaviour it looked like it might of been some sort of poisoning.
Also,you had described this worm's head as having some sort of sucker part,could you expound on that a bit more?
In the picture it does not look like it have any sucker parts my first reaction was that perhaps you might of had a leech of some sort, and there are plenty of marine leeches(which also belong to the annelids) but Dr.Ron replied that this one does not look like any of them.
His response to this part of my question was:

"Hi Gene,

Well, from what I saw, the worm didn't have any "sucker" part.

There are plenty of marine leeches (and these are annelids), but this didn't look like one.

I concur that it sounded like poisoning.

Cheers, Ron

So,I don't think your worm the culprit and to be blamed for your fish demise.

Sorry for your losses,k9anna.