Nikki's quote;
A good way to control bristleworms is by nutrient export. They're scavengers usually, so minimize the amount of food they can find by regular water changes, heavy skimming, and no dead zones.
To further Nikki's input; Large populations of bristle worms are often a warning sign or an indicator of the aquariums condition. Typically aquariums with large populations are over fed, under filtered, not maintained properly or any combination there of. In other words, tanks with huge populations are normally need cleaned better. An aquarium can not have a huge population of anything with out there being a lot of matter for said population to sustain itself on. A regular and thorough cleaning of an aquarium with lots of bristle worms will normally make them go away because what is supporting them has been removed, I.E. - they starve and die off. Certainly, trapping them and physically removing them is a good idea, especially the larger ones but if you don't remove what allowed the huge population in the first place, it'll just keep coming back. I know this will raise a few eyebrows but the same can be said for aquariums that have massive populations of isopods and copapods. Yes, they are desirable but if an aquariums has billions of them, what do you think is supporting them?
Joel