Feather Duster Worm Care

ArowanaLover1902 · Jan 2, 2018

I used to have a few feather dusters that did relatively well, sadly I had a tank crash back then and lost them, I've been thinking about adding one or two, but would they bring down my copepod count to low, I'm hoping to add a mandarin eventually and don't want to lose the months of growing out my population. Also, I'd love to see some pictures of you guy's feather worm setups (does anyone have a setup that focuses on these, it'd be really cool to see a ton of them in one tank, they're so sensitive it'd be as if it was one giant organism).

Tahoe61 · Jan 3, 2018

Feather Duster are going to eat fine suspended particles within the water column. Feather Dusters will have no noticeable impact on the copepod population. I find Feather Dusters to e quite hardy actually, blowing off rocks and stirring up some detritus seems of benefit. Avoid shrimp imo as they pick at most Feather Dusters and stress the animal out if not outright eat them.

Bret Brinkmann · Jan 7, 2018

I feed mine phytofeast and oysterfeast. I believe there is a range of particle sizes they can eat. Don't have any good pictures right now but I will get some.

ArowanaLover1902 · Jan 7, 2018

Awesome thank's I'd really appreciate some, I may get one next time I go to my LFS, they've had some for months and they've gotten pretty sizeable but price hasn't gone up

Bret Brinkmann · Jan 10, 2018

Sorry for getting these up so late. Here is my little blue one. It has been with me from the start of my current tank. It is about half the size of my pinky finger nail. I am not sure what species it is but it doesn't seem to be getting any bigger. Its hard (calcareous?) tube has gotten longer and grows along the live rock. The rock in the surrounding area is covered in some kind of sponge, chicken liver sponge I think. Never had such a colorful one as this. I was hoping it would spread but I have had it for about two and a half years now and it's the only one of its kind in the tank. I had a large brown and tan one that I thought I had a picture of but apparently I don't. I think a gorilla crab ate it a while back. I have since then gotten that crab out of the tank. I also have other various small ones, but they are the usual white, brown, tan, and grey variety. Hard to take good pictures of and not as eye catching as this blue one. Once I get this dino situation of mine resolved, then I will be looking to get some more.

ArowanaLover1902 · Jan 11, 2018

Wow he's really pretty, I was thinking maybe a Hawaiian feather duster, those are pretty big and most things leave them alone, but now I kinda want those.

John3 · Jan 11, 2018

Nice hitchhiker Bret! I’m guessing Florida live rock? I have 2 that are similar but are orange and blue. I’ve never seen any rock for sale at the lfs with these. They have not reproduced in my tank. I got a bunch of small white ones that spread everywhere. I have Seen some Christmas tree worm rocks that are similar and even more impressive at the lfs.

Sadly I’ve read a lot of people have a hard time keeping the larger feather dusters and that has been my experience. I had one for 8 months that was doing great and then all of the sudden it’s tube started to disintegrate. The worm shed it’s feather and I thought it was a goner. But I found it lower in the tank and it started growing new feathers. Everything seemed to be back on track when it just disappeared into the tank somewhere. It’s been missing now for about 4 weeks and I’ve pretty much lost hope it will turn up.