Help me with my bristleworm issue

[davidhughes85]

I have a newly set up 20L and have hundreds of bistleworms. I dont see any during the day but at night they are EVERYWHERE. They are all about 1-1.5 inches. I havent thought much of them until I put in 6 snails, all died but one. The last one to die I noticed a ton of worms going in the shell, so I assumed it had died and now the bristleworms were eating it. I put in a turbo snail a week ago and it has been active around the tank. I took a flash light to the tank tonight and noticed several bristle worms trying to get past the hard round part that turbos put over the opening of their shell. There was probably four on the snail. The snail is not dead I put it on the glass out of their reach but now I dont know what to do about my bristle worm situation. It seems they are actually killing my snails.

[flyyyguy]

Id love to see a pic of the bristleworms trying to kill and eat a healthy snail.

Bristelworms are harmless detrivores and part of your clean up crew. If yo have hundreds of them in a newly set up tank then I assume you started with somebody elses old nasty sand, loaded with phosphates.

Always start a tank with new dry sand, so you dont willingly start off on the wrong foot. The worms are there because the nutrients are there to feed them. Their polulation is directly relevant to the amount of excess food in the system for thme to thrive on.

To be sure....when I say Id love to see a pic of it, Im not saying you arent witnessing it. Im just saying I have never seen it and would like to see a pic. :)

[Ritten]

x2

[davidhughes85]

I will try and get a pic tomm, the snail isnt doing very good its I accidently knocked him off the glass doing a water change and he still hasnt righted himself this morning

As for my sand, yes I did use someone elses sand, but after seeing how much gunk it had, I took it back out and rinsed it for about 40 minutes in a bucket draining water every couple minutes. I had nitrates of 40ppm for about the first month. This last week they have dropped to about 10ppm. Will this sand be an issue? The bristle worms are on my rock more than the sand.