do you feed FD's?

[Linda]

I have talked to people who feed their feather dusters, and I have talked to people who have never fed them, and had them for years.


So, advice from HERE is what I tend to take a the GOOD ADVICE.....what do you do? Feed or not???
My son is now getting interested in sw...and he just loves feather dusters....he is the only kid in his class who has a sw tank in the house...and he got to show pics and tell all about it.........so cool ya know!!!! (One of the girls...(7th grade mind you) asked if she could come over and see 'The Tank' sometime......rotflmbo!!!!) My little Romeo.
anyway..........to feed or not to feed, that is my question

[lfish]

I think ever since Finding Nemo too, kids are very excited about saltwater aquariums.

[davidsreef]

I assume you are talking about the larger Hawaiian feather duster. I never had one of those, so I can't speak about that. But I do have dozens of small feather duster type worms on my live rock (they have a cool red crown) and I have never fed them. They seem to be doing fine. I even think they spawned a few days ago ??? So, from my experience I didn't feed the small feather dusters and don't see a need to in my tank.
It depends on your setup. If you have many feather dusters in a small aquarium, with a really good protein skimmer, then yes you probably would have to feed with some sort of food cause the good skimmer may skim out the food that the feather dusters would eat. But if your like me, and don't have the top of the line skimmer, then feeding may not be necessary. IMO. I would be interested as to what others do

[DevilBoy]

in my honest opinion, it never hurts to spot feed any coral in your reef tank. whether it be featherduster, mushrooms (wiggly things), zoanthids, polyps, etc... some of the others corals that have mouths you could spot feed small pcs of silversides,shrimp, etc... and you will notice the difference, they seem to be happier, opening larger, and may spread quicker then you would realize. but as for feeding dusters, zoanthids, finger leathers that use small tiny polyps to grab the food out of the water column to eat i would suggest spot feeding some type of plankton. you do need to feed them alot of it. maybe 2 - 3 times a week. my suggestion would be to either get some DTs phytoplankton or Phyto feast. i have tried the DTs. But i have heard nothing but very good things about phyto feast, and ppl i talk to on some of the forums are switching over to the phyto feast. just do a google search for phyto feast, and you will find plenty of info on the product...


i forgot to add that, if u start spot feeding the plankton turn off filters, skimmers, and powerheads for a hour or two. so the corals can filter feed. i try to get the plankton close to the corals polyps as i can so the little bit i fed will suspend around the coral. if you got cleaner shrimp, peppermint shrimp, or other shrimp, make sure you feed them first along with your fish. since the lil buggers will steal all the plankton from the corals.