Can I....

[Drewbaby]

Can I keep a featherduster? Ive been told that they are hard to keep alive in an aquarium unless its a larger one.

I have a 55 gallon thats been setup and running sucessfully for about 10 months now.

I have other filter feeding things living in the tank already
such as:

yellow stony polyps
metalic green stars
and a large amount of small tube worms and what look like miniature feather dusters.

My main question is are the min. requirements to keep a feather duster alive in an aquarium?

[jhildebrand]

The polyps are likely getting fed mostly by the light in the tank. The more rock you have the better and a refugium may help. They are fine filter feeders and won't be able to take much of anything from supplemental feeding. If it's an established tank you may be okay, but I'd avoid it if it's devoid of flow and/or small reproducing critters if it were me. The larger the worm, the more food required, and some starve slowly.

[charlesr1958]

Either culture your own phytoplankton or buy ready to use such as DT's and slowly drip in a good dose of it over the course of the day. Doing so will feed the worm and a great many other creatures such as copepods which in turn will add to the live food available to the entire tank.

Chuck