ok, i have had a feather duster for a long while now, i added two more, the tangs picked at them soo bad that one left his tube and died, and the other i pushed up against a rock, since they wouldnt leave him buried. i replaced the one but the new wone was picked at and died also. Back the the original one, i noticed last night that he is coming about halfway out of his tube and i dont know why. Is he building more tube, outgrowing the old tube. someone help me out, my wife loves these things and is upset that they are all being killed and what not… thanks
Generally when you have a fish eating something else in the tank you end up with a decision to make. Do you like the tangs or the feather duster more? One is going to have to go. Unlike dogs, cats, hamsters and other “normal” household pets fish are not that easily trained. If they have a taste for feather dusters they are goig to continue to eat the feather dusters.
Of course you could always get a small nano tank for the wife to just keep feather dusters in.
Can you put the feather/tube into a rock with a hole in it? I have one of my feathers in there and it was pretty well shielded from everything except the emerald crab that lives in there with it, it is now growing out of the rock. My tang never bothered my feathers. If you place them on rock work thou, they glue themselves to it and moving them again will probably rip its tube. I accidentally just placed them on the rock with the heads not facing the direction I wanted and then they glued down and I couldn’t move them. No big deal they just moved themselves.
I also noticed high mag really allowed one of my feather dusters to grow its tube out. I’ve never seen them come out of the tube only the feathers.
i have scopas and sailfin, they dont eat at the worms, just the tubes and get worm upset so they leave tube and die either by crab or fish… original duster has never been bothered and still isnt, just new ones. still dont know why original is now coming out of tube, no one is bothering him. is he outgrowing tube, he looks a lot fatter than tube?
i thought dusters had to be on substrait so they could form new tubes? if i can move him up on rock then i will, just thought that i couldnt take him off sand?
I have had several that grew and did very well up in the rock work. I don’t think they need to be on the substrate to grow new tube, just need enough nutrients in the water and food.
Do you place the feather duster in the same time you feed them every day. Do you feed the tangs marine algae or feed them 3-4 times a day. What types of foods to the tangs eat? What types of tangs are these anyways?(just saw you answered this) What size tank do you have? How much LR?
Typically, at least in my experience, tangs do not bother feather dusters, but if they are not eating enough may resort to almost anything as food. Both species you have need to be fed at least 3 times a day. If they can feed themselves off an algae strip you put in the tank in every morning they may be ok. Some people may claim in a larger tank(north of 150g) you don’t have to feed them as much, which is possible, but there are too many variables. I talked to a guy once who didn’t understand why his tang died when he had so much algae in his tank. Turns out he didn’t have lots of algae in his tank he had lots of cyano bacteria.
ok, i understand all that, and it helps with the new dusters, but as far as my old one that is not being bothered at all, he is completely out of his tube now> no fish have ever bothered him or anything, he just came out of his tube for some reason?