Giant feather duster propagation

BloopFish · Oct 15, 2019

I used to keep several Hawaiian featherdusters in a FOWLR that was exposed to sunlight and thus always had a lot of phytoplankton. They reproduced like crazy, sexually. My former LFS always had them in stock and thus had many babies in the sump from them spawning. I suspect they really love dirty tanks. In one kf my tanks I had a couple tiny Hawaiian featherduster smaller than the size of a dime, months later I had many of them scattered across the rockscape and sand.This tank was very very dirty (nutrient wise like algae, not just nitrates).

KleineVampir · Oct 15, 2019

While we're talking about feather dusters...I just caught my cleaner shrimp digging around in the retracted feather duster. That feather duster didn't look too happy earlier today and seemed to be emitting some kind of mucus that was forming a strand. Anybody know what the heck is going on there? Are the cleaner shrimp able to harm the feather dusters significantly?

KleineVampir · Oct 16, 2019

It's not like I don't have shrimp food. I threw some shrimp pellets in there even though they're meant for freshwater shrimp, I guess. Maybe they'll eat that instead of my dusters!

KleineVampir · Oct 17, 2019

ThunderGoose said:
Mine looked like it developed two sets of crowns and then it didn't come out for a while and shortly after there were two. I'm not sure if they split front to back and shared the same tube for a while or what.

That's probably what happened.

To answer my own question, yes cleaner shrimp can do serious damage to feather dusters. He cut off about a third of his radioles. I'm just gonna feed them the nondescript invertebrate pellets the same time I feed my freshwater shrimpies.

Bret Brinkmann · Oct 17, 2019

I had a duster about 2.5 inches and it emitted what looked like eggs one day. This lasted 2 or 3 days, then a week later it died. I did see some new small ones about a month later but they either moved or died too. I did have some predatory bristle worms a while ago. They may have fell prey to them.

KleineVampir · Oct 20, 2019

What do feather dusters eat exactly? I'm pretty sure they're eating tiny bits of algae and phytoplankton, but do they eat anything else that you guys know of?