For a small 5 gallon tank I just saw the largest bristle worm ever. Must be at least 4" long and rather thick. What worries me is that I seem to remember somehting about them going after small fish. And I just added a Royal Gamma as the sole inhabitant.
Well, something got the gamma last night. D*mnit. Guess I'll have to go fishing for bristle worms, unless you think a Fire Shrimp could be the culprit.
It would be very rare for a detritivore like a bristleworm to go after a fish... unless its already dead. I would think its the tank itself or the fish's poor health to start that are the culprits.
I would tend to agree, but everything in the tank is thriving, and I watched the royal at the pet store over a week, always ate, not really skittish. Acclimated him nice and slowly with a dripline. Saw him in the rocks the day before and his skeleton the next.
I just thought cause it was such a small tank maybe the bristle had an easier time getting to it.
Main issue is that they don't have any mechanism by which to capture or do damage to a fish. They don't have giant pincers or poisinous rays or the like.
Its one thing for them to eat a coral, quite another a healthy fish. Even the first nibble would have set the fish to running.