Feather dusters invade....

[tendar]

Well my sand bottom is being taken over by small feather dusters. The sand bottom is covered withthem any where that is out of direct light. So I have a few questions on this .
First is this a problem or a good thing?
If good, how so?
If bad, how would be the best remedie for getting rid of them or at least keeping the population down?

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Buy propigated corals
Its never big enough

[Rin]

I consider it a good thing. My DSB has done the same thing. I have some dusters that are as big around as a quarter. Feathers are not detrimental in any way that I know of. I don't know any any direct benefits other than that they increase the diversity of your tank--which is always good.

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-Todd
'There're only 3 types of people in the world: Those who can count and those who can't'

[petpoor]

I agree with Rin I feel it is a good thing,I have many that are growing behind my reef in the lower light areas. Their population really took off when I started feeding DT's to the tank and so did the encrusting sponge population.
Tom

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Toms Reef

[Neal359]

i hade the same thing i hade so meny that some ended up in my sump

[ravenmore]

I just mentioned it in another post - I believe I remember Dr. Shimek mentioning that filter feeders like fan worms eat the free floating life stage of the ich parasite. I'm going to run it by him again to double check though. That's a pretty big plus in my book.

-Mike

[ravenmore]

I ran it by Dr. Ron in Tendar's identical post in Ron's forum on reef central. I thought I'd post his response:


quote:
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Originally posted by ravenmore: I could be wrong on this, but I thought I remember you saying somewhere that some filter feeders, such as fan worms, catch the free swimming phase of the ich parasite and can help with a little biological control of the parasite. Is that accurate or am I off in the weeds?

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Hi Mike,

No, you are absolutely correct. Any parasite that has a unicellular or even small multicellular swarmmer, or swimmer is definitely at risk in a tank with suspension feeders such as sponges, feather dusters, or clams. Actually, on reflection, I suspect that probably the best control for any of these diseases a reef tank would be a moderately large, healthy Tridacna. These animals actively filter huge amounts of water, and what they don't eat (and they may not eat the parasite's stages), gets bound into mucus and likely smothered in snot.

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I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything.

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