Feather Duster

[Eversurf]

My feather duster was doing very well for a week and now his head has fallen off as if it had been clean chopped. The tube is now close. Is this normal? I have read that they do lose their feathers, but I wasn't expecting the whole crown to come off.

Thanx

 

[sianeds]

I think I'm correct in saying that if a feather duster isn't getting enough food it will shed it's entire crown and become a smaller animal. This is it's way of surviving as it doesn't need so much food. It can do this two or maybe three times, but it will eventually die.

If yours has just shed it's crown then it's obviously not getting anywhere near enough food. Feather dusters need WAY more food than you might think. You need to add fine particulate foods and phytoplankton. Large feather dusters tend to better in tanks with a DSB but even then they have a relatively low captive survival rate and most tend to starve within a year or so.

It will take a couple of weeks for a new crown to regenerate. In this time you need to find yourself some good food for it. I use Salifert Coral Food. It costs me around £12 for a 250ml bottle. You only need to add 5ml for every 50gallons so it lasts ages. I put a decent squirt in every week or so and my feather duster is thriving

 

[SkiFletch]

What she said

 

[sianeds]

Yay yay Ski agrees 8)

 

[Nina]

Although I am not disagreeing with the above, my feather shed its crown about 3 or 4 days after first getting it, so I do wonder if it does it when a stressful event has happened - such as a tank move - sometimes has something to do with it as well.

It took about 2 weeks and then it started to grow (I assume this is what they do) a new crown. Since then he gets loads of food and for the last 9/10 months has done really well.

 

[sianeds]

It makes sense that it could react to stress in that way...also you can never be sure how much nutrition it was getting during shipping and at the LFS

 

[James B]

my guess would be squat generally there not in the lfs for long

 

[Eversurf]

Well I will buy some of that stuff Plankton thingny. do I need to put some in the tank before it grows it's crown back?

 

[sianeds]

Well it can't feed untill it's crown regrows but you might aswell drop a bit in. The small hitchhiker feather dusters you undoubtably have will thank you for it as will any coral you may have which require fine phytoplankton feeds As long as you only add the recommeded dose it will do no harm to your system