Where did all these feather dusters come from?

RussC · Aug 10, 2018

I guess you could call it an outbreak. But over the last two months I've noticed a ton of very small feather dusters sprout all over my tank. They are no larger than a penny, but they are everywhere. Why now? What are they eating? Coincidentally, I have a brown algae bloom on my substrate. This coincided with a 5% increase in my lighting. Thinking the two were related, I checked phosphates. Zero. And that's using the Hanna Checker ULR. My ALK is steady at 9.4 and CA at 420. That leaves feeding. But that comes back to my question, why now?

I feed 1.5 cubes of frozen food every other day and some flakes here and there. And my auto feeder feeds a small dose of pellets twice a day. The tank is one year old today.

This post is more about curiosity than it is to solve a problem. Its just interesting to know why.

ca1ore · Aug 10, 2018

They are opportunistic filter feeders that propogate easily under the right conditions. I'd view them as a good problem to have.

RussC · Aug 10, 2018

Yea, I kinda like it. Looks very natural.

Deiblerj · Aug 10, 2018

I have a some going crazy in my tank now. Think they look pretty cool. Hey are growing pretty fast too!

Katrina71 · Aug 10, 2018

When a mommy feather duster and a daddy feather duster really love each other...

saltyhog · Aug 10, 2018

I like the way they look. When I see them doing well I'm encouraged that other filter feeders might do well also. I have bunches of them in my nano but my Copper Band Butterfly keeps them eliminated from my main tank.