The sabellariids are important reef builders, and has been known as "honeycomb worm". They have golden, coppery or brassy paleal setae and build curved tusk-shaped fragile tubes. They are suspension feeders and live in sandy tubes attached to various objects. They tend to build their tubes on firm substrates like on rocks or attached to living molluscs shells or on the fronds of algae. They favour areas of turbid water because the wave motion could provide a constant supply of sand for tube construction. The building organ select the appropriate sized sand grains and cement them to the tube with mucus. Colonies form quickly and persist for 2-3 years and deteriorate when the worm die and their sand tubes disintegrate. Due to their rapid formation, sabellarids pose to be hazard to shipping by occluding ship channels. Some of them are present in shallow waters and while others build their tubes on seagrasses. Sabellarids are filter-feeders using their buccal cirri to trap phytoplankton. For intertidal species, they avoid dessication by pugging their tube entrance with their operculum during low tide. There is an array of tentacles borne on a stalk-like structure bearing a hard setal crown of radioles which can be drawn down as an operculum to plug the tube.