I've had my feather duster for about 6 months now and it has been doing very well. Last night I noticed he/she had lost some of the feathers. There has been no changes to the tank other than the recent splitting of my BTA about a week and half ago. Everyone else, including the corals, seems to be doing fine. Nobody has been bothering him. 10% water changes weekly, water tests well. Any ideas?
Feather duster lost feathers
- Thread starter joebeagle
- Start date
BuddhaKiss
Active member
did it lose its entire crown of feathers or just a few here and there? If its the entire crown, its likely due ot insufficient food in the tank and its just getting ready to regrow a smaller crown.
aulepe
New member
if its a giant feather duster (sabellastarte), and it loses its entire crown usually not a good thing. 
i've had it happen to a couple of my giant feather dusters and they'll often grow a progressively smaller crown back once or twice more before dying, presumably from lack of nutrition. i've tried spot feeding phytoplankton and other micronutrients to no avail.
on the other hand, i have a coco worm (protula) that's lost its crown a few times in the past year or so and seems to be doing okay...
i've had it happen to a couple of my giant feather dusters and they'll often grow a progressively smaller crown back once or twice more before dying, presumably from lack of nutrition. i've tried spot feeding phytoplankton and other micronutrients to no avail. on the other hand, i have a coco worm (protula) that's lost its crown a few times in the past year or so and seems to be doing okay...
plateboy3293
New member
I had my fan worm lose its crown a month ago from being pestered by me moving rocks around it dropped its crown but it has regrown it back to its full size
weakspleen
New member
I've had two similar incidences.
A brown (Hawaiin?) feather duster lost the fullness of its plumage, for lack of a more scientific definition. We couldn't figure out why, tank parameters were holding steady in our AP24. A field of Green Star Polyps was very close by... It did not lose its entire crown, just the fullness of the feathers. After X amount of time, it regained its previous fullness and has since grown to at least 1.5 times the size of when I bought it a year ago.
My coco worm shed its two heads. The cleanup crew didn't descend into the shaft to finish him off, so we just waited it out. It slowly grew back to its original size and we've had no problems since. That was Jun or Jul 08.
A brown (Hawaiin?) feather duster lost the fullness of its plumage, for lack of a more scientific definition. We couldn't figure out why, tank parameters were holding steady in our AP24. A field of Green Star Polyps was very close by... It did not lose its entire crown, just the fullness of the feathers. After X amount of time, it regained its previous fullness and has since grown to at least 1.5 times the size of when I bought it a year ago.
My coco worm shed its two heads. The cleanup crew didn't descend into the shaft to finish him off, so we just waited it out. It slowly grew back to its original size and we've had no problems since. That was Jun or Jul 08.
