Parasitic tiny featherdusters - need a predator! Fish, shrimp, crab...

karimwassef

karimwassef

Active member
These parasitic featherdusters are reaching epidemic levels. They're growing from inside coral tissue, around them, on all fixtures and walls...

They were pretty at first, but now they're a growing plague.

I have a dozen coral banded shrimp and they can't control the population. I've gotten arrow crabs but they get killed by the CBS. I have over a dozen emerald crabs and an unknown number of glass and peppermint shrimp (10s-100). I have two cleaner shrimp. I have urchins, hermit crabs and serpent stars.

I have wrasses: six line, melanarus, dusky, yellow
I have a trigger: blue throat

I need a dedicated featherdusters predator... Ideas?

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I scrape them off but that seems to spread them. They comeback almost overnight.

Help!
 
That's a crazy amount of feather dusters...I've found that their population in my tank generally reflects how much I'm feeding. Are you over feeding a lot?

You could try butterflies. I read that copperbands eat them but I've never tried to even attempt a copperband so I wouldn't know personally
 
Get a copperband. It can feed on those featherdusters, and hopefully you can get it to eat something else while in the process.
 
Wow... I have always had them, and while they do tend to pop up here and there without any rhyme or reason, I have never had them colonize on me... lol
 
i used to have a lot of them but since i added a vrolik's wrasse, they are pretty much gone. that's an insane amount you have!
 
If you can get a healthy copperband it will eat those, but gorgonians, clams, coco worms and some other things may be off your list of things to keep as well.
 
reefbroao said:
+1 to copperband but it will most likely die because they're ticking time bombs.
Click to expand...

It may take a little effort to find one that eats, and eats what you would like, but I would not label them as a time bomb, many people keep them, and there are many more difficult to keep fish that may fit that description better.
I've had 5 over the years fairly long term, each one was different in what it ate or picked at, 3 were what I'd call model citizens as CBB's go.
I did however actually miss having feather dusters in my tank, but they were not to the level as OP
 
Thanks guys. I do feed a lot, but overfeeding is a qualitative measure.

I feed what it takes for my corals to grow quickly... and they do grow very quickly.

This plague is a pain. I'll get a big copperband or two. The tank is 380gal DT and 660g system, so the quantity of these worms is massive. They're literally tearing the tissue of my coral to break through... like tiny white aliens.
 
Could you increase flow? In my 125g system my refugium looked like that but I never had any in the display. I always thought it was because the flow was much stronger and the fish ate them.

I have several in the current system that came on the coralline algae plates I got from indo-pacific sea farms. They have never really moved from them though--but the tank has only been up 4 months.
 
I have a massive surge that dumps 40gal in a few seconds. I also have two WP60s that generate pulse waves all through the 8ft length.

There will always be some areas of slower flow for the LPS and this is where they tend to dominate. The flow is barely slow enough for the LPS to open. If I increase it there too, they'll stay shut.
 
I came home today to a sad state... The featherdusters had burrowed so deeply into the coral skeleton that it broke when a passing urchin pulled on it :(

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Fractured the skeleton in half right where these parasites are.
 
Interesting. I don't think they burrow though. Just make tubes on top of where they are attached. Maybe they maintain a lower pH in the tubes that eroded the skeleton away?

I just realized that I think mine may have spawned, I have small ones all over the place in the sump--even in the protein skimmer--but no new ones in my display. Current tank doesn't have fish yet either.

I also had a sally lightfoot crab in the last tank--that is now in my macro tank. When I moved my refugium rocks to the macro tank the feather dusters slowly disappeared. Maybe he (or the hermits I moved too) ate them?
 
The fracture happened right around the greatest concentration of the tubes. I was so angry that I scraped them all off with a knife without stopping to take pictures or inspect more carefully... Deep breaths...

With my SPS, they literally are inside the coral tissue. It might be that the coral is growing around the tubes, but the resulting matrix is much weaker than the coral would otherwise have been.
 
This is my surge outlet's bottom side. The area immediately under the 2" PVC elbow has little flow compared to the rest of the tank. The photo color is bad because of shadowing (it's more pale white, not so greenish yellow), but you can see where the featherdusters have spread on the PVC. This should be easy pickings for a worm eating fish.

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I think my wrasses have become spoilt..

I feed a lot and so the usual predators, emerald/hermit/sally crabs, wrasses, and CBS are just not hunting any more. It does keep the scavengers that would usually turn predatory from hurting my corals and good cuc like cucumbers.

But the feeding regimen is excellent for my coral growth... Maybe I need to go on a short term diet to illicit a more aggressive response from my lazy predators.
 
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