new feather duster

i just got my first duster. its really cool and came out after being in the tank for 1 minute. anyways what do i feed it? lol

 

They eat plankton floating in the water.

 

i know. but do i need to supply anything else?

 

It depends. Unfortunately, it depends on whether you have enough plankton or not, which isn't exactly something easy to measure. Unless your water is slightly green, you can't really tell very well.

 

i have a bunch of them on my rocks and all i put in there is the usuall fish flakes , zooplex stuff, brine and such and they are fine and big! hope that helps

 

I've got the tiny ones that come with the LR> Anything get's near them they pull in the rock quickly. Some are larger than others, but they are all small and white. No color at all. WIll they grow to be the feather dusters I see at my LFS that are stand alone with just their shell no rock ... ?

 

Not quite. Dusters eat phytoplankton, not copepods.

 

Nope, the tiny ones are different species. There's species in all sorts of sizes. I have the tiny ones on my rock, and I bought a medium coco worm (hard tube) and giant Hawaiian feather duster (soft tube). The coco is about 1.5" across, and the Hawaiian is probably 8" across.

 

Blackraven thanks once again for the clarification. I was hoping they would grow. As for the hard shell, what do they do in a tank? Just lay down on the substrate? I imagine they add color and perhaps some level of filtration perhaps.

 

They add color, and they're kinda cool. Just wait until someone who isn't very familiar with reefs comes over, and you show them that the thing over there is actually alive by touching it and making it retract.

Not often, of course, as too much will stress it out, but every once in a while.

I have mine buried in the sand, with a portion of the tube and the whole crown sticking out. You can see the hawaiian on the left, behind the trachy and to the right of the goniastrea. The coco is on the right, between the plate and chalice: