[Rhonda.J]

I have the little brown feater dusters everywhere, probably literally close to a thousand. I have several small red ones and several white ones. I have a rock that has a nice sized feather duster that appears to be spreading also. I just bought a feather duster last week that has the tube. My question is are these feather dusters basically the same kind only with differnent type tubes? Or are they different? I thought since I have so many dusters that I could go ahead and try to keep some of the other ones. But I have been told that the ones that get large and live in the tubes are harder to keep than the ones that live in rocks. I do have some small dusters that have tubes attached to rock that came on the rock when I got it and they are doing well. I feed DT phytoplanton and golden pearls and spot feed the corals with selcon enriched frozen food atleast once a week. Should I be doing anything else to be sure my new duster does well? Or is there anything I should be careful about? Also can anyone explain the difference in these two feather dusters if any?

[djheywood]

I think they are just different species of feathers. Some get big, some stay small. They are all relatively easy to keep in my experience. Just bury most of the tube in your sandbed. They filter feed on their own. I have never fed any of mine and they seem to be healthy. If they lose their feather (They can shoot it off) leave the tube alone. The worm will regrow the feather in about a month or so.

Good luck.

[Mikeman]

feather dusters only shoot their heads if something is wrong, they can regrow them, but its better to have them keep the heads they have

[Joaco]

Here is a good link to featherdusters.
Rob Toonen (marine biologist) shares some good info with us about their care:

http://sites.netscape.net/douglxyzzy...erdusters.html

Joaco

[Joaco]

About the crown, quote from the link above, by RobToonen:

Dwalker is correct that these worms often lose their crown and that it will usually grow back, but it's not something to be taken lightly -- the loss of the crown is quite a stress to the animals and they can't continue to loss and regrow their crowns indefinitely. They loss their crown in response to extreme stress (such as being moved to a new aquarium), and unless that stressor is removed, the animals will not recover.

Joaco