Help w/ Feather Duster

[siond]

I have a feather duster that has been in my tank for quite some time, recently my tang took a liking to its shell and started eating it, somehow it got the whole thing out of the sand bed and now i wake up and my duster is just sitting on top of the sand bed NAKED! What to i do? he has no more shell!!!

 

[Avi]

Well, put it somewhere underneath the rockwork on the substrate. The tang may not bother it there and it will have time to reconsitute its sheath. The problem is, that it may settle in somewhere that you won't be able to see it all that well anymore, but I guess that's better than losing it altogether.

 

[btldreef]

Definitely try and hide it in some rock work and protect it as best you can from the tang until it is able to produce a shell again. I'd also offer the tang a little bit more to eat to keep him less interested in eating the FD. I have no luck with feather dusters, I think my Coral Beauty killed all three of ours and our coco worm :irked:. At least she leaves the corals alone though. In all honesty if your tang decides he's going to eat this feather duster, there's not a whole lot you can do to stop him but you're only going to entire him by leaving the FD out in the open. Good luck.

 

[siond]

so hes leaving the FD alone now bec there is no shell but every time i try to put him in the substrate and underneath rocks, he just wiggles his way right out!

 

[Avi]

Maybe the tang will leave it alone, only so long as there no sheath around it. But, if it starts to create one out in the open the problem may re0ccur. Is there any hole in the rockwork in your tank that you can place the feather duster into so that only its "feather" sticks out so that the worm itself is protected?

 

[siond]

i can put him in holes in rocks but i thought they need to be buried in the sand/crushed coral(i.e. substrate) or should i put him on the substrate underneath the rock work?

 

[Avi]

A feather duster will create a sheathe around its body if it needs to and is healthy. They can do it on the substrate and incorprate some of the substrate and other materials around it, or it will do it unaided if its sitting in the rockwork. I have one that I had the same experience as you;re having and it's been in the hole for about a year now. The sheathe is permanently set in that hole, though.

If you put it on the substrate under the rockwork, it would probably do all right there as well, so long as you're putting filter feeder food in the tank that it can consume.

 

[siond]

its been in my tank for months now and doin fine but no matter where i put it it just wiggles its was out, i dunno mayb i should just let it be and see what happens but i think its gonna die.

 

[Avi]

had you been feeding it a filter feeder food?

 

[siond]

yea

 

[Avi]

Well, then, so long as the head of the feather duster doesn't fall off, and you're continuing to feed the phyto in sufficient amounts and often enough, then it has a good chance of surviving. The only problem is, it may choose to lodge itself in a place that doesn't make viewing convenient. But, that's still better than having it die, so just put it somewhere that it's unlikely that the tang would go after it while it recreates its tube and hope for the best.