Surgery!!!

turn the lights off for a day or so.

by the way, it's very possibly that you'll never see another worm again. when you netted the clown, did you have him fully in the water so he could breath? it doesn't metter now, what's done is done, but i was just wondering. i removed long fat white worm from my cardinal tetra before, it was stuck so that i thought i was going to remove it with the fish's gill. i put some aloe in and few months later he still swims with his friends. he was stressed but had calm down by the end of the same day. good luck. hope somebody has better idea for your clown. because i don't mess with my salt water fish. i have fish cleaners so i make them do the work.

Boulderman,

I dont know if I am not seeing something or it is my computer, but I don't see any images. I would like to see what you are talking about so I can look for the same things in my tank.

A little input as well about the cleaner fish/shrimp. I recently bought a Neon Goby (actually three, but one came before the other two) and was simply amazed at how small they are! Here is a picture of the one the LFS ordered for me:

And no, I do not have that big of a finger!

I just wanted to point this out because at least in my area, they are hard to order in a much larger size and this causes a big problem for any of us that have powerhead pumps or intake heads since they can obviously get sucked into almost anything. I eventually went back to the LFS to get the other two gobies since I had paid for them (the one in the picture did not make it over night. I had to keep it in a breeder's net so it wouldn't get sucked up and that must have stressed it out or something) and saw that the LFS had put some cloth over their intakes and one of the gobies was stuck to it anyways. I just took the loss of money and went home.

Anyways, I looked into the shrimp idea since they were obviously bigger and was advised to get a Fire (Blood) Shrimp. These shrimp are GREAT cleaners and I see it happen quite a bit in my tank. They are less apt to stick to cleaning the live rock as I have been told the Skunk Shrimp (I believe, my LFS just calls them 'cleaner shrimp') tend to do more. They are reclusive but when I got another one and had a pair, they were and still are all over the place, especially when only my blue actynic lights are on. I really like them a lot and felt that maybe you could look into them and see if they would help you out with your situation. I also know that my six-line wrasse is really good at eating any worms and little unwanted critters from the live rock. I think mine has created a little bond with my flame angel and so I was thinking that maybe it could go after some of the worms that you have, but that is just a thought and not really even an educated guess.

wow! you need something that would eat that stuff. i was trying to go figure what it is, but it's so many of them that it would take me hours to figure what kind it is. well, give a clown a brake for two days or so before you mess with him again. i read about parasites and it could be anything, but some use fish for just transportation and others suck their blood. interesting thing is that lice, and i'm sure some other, will hook onto the host's face because it keeps the parasite from being washed away by the current. suppostibly, those things are irritants to the fish, but it's worse if there are several at one time. i say, give the fish a break and try again, but don't take it out of the water. i just netted my fish and brought it up near the top and worked from there, put a hand under a net and gently turned the fish a little on the side so i could get the worm. now, i would run out to the store and get cleaner wresse, but you can't go by me. that fish or cleaner shrimp will take care of the problem withing few days, so you wouldn't have to torcher and maybe loose your clown to stress. there are two things about cleaner wresse you need to know. first, you have to make sure it eats at least live brine shrimp before you buy it, so ask to feed it. later it will learn to eat averything else, but if it doesn't take anything than it's possible that it never will and soon will starve because you don't have that many fish. second, when they adjust they can get a bit territorial. mine attacks new fish sometimes, and my hand.

It looks like a fluke to me . I'd give the fish a fresh water dip ,"make sure the ph of the water matches and slowly adjust the s.g. to fresh water. The invertebrate is far more sensitive to osmotic shock than the fish. After treatment keep an eye on your tank for a while and make sure that you don't have a re-infestation.
You could really avoid a lot of issues if you'd set up a relatively inexpensive q.t. tank. It's much better to have one available than to have to treat your main tank.
hth
Max