Feather Duster Reproduction

Jenna09

Reefing newb
The small hard tube feather dusters reproduce in my tank like crazy and have for years.

Now, I have had 1 feather duster (soft tube) in my tank for probably around 7 years; he has lived through triggers, puffers, copper treatment and who knows what else lol.

About 4 years ago I purchased 2 other soft tube dusters. I thought one died about a year after getting it as its "feather head" fell off but it grew back slowly.

I have let my tank go over the last 2 years in the sense that the front glass was algaed over and I couldnt see in. However I would check everyday through the water at the top and everything was growing like crazy and doing great. I would do water changes and had everything running it just was no longer a display tank.

When I cleaned off my glass at the beginning of this year I was surprised to see that I now have 5 huge feather dusters and 1 smaller one.

The new ones are at least 5 inches long that I can see and go into the rocks and the smaller one is sticking out about 3 inches and has a smaller head.

I was looking it up and found this info
Soft tube varieties reproduce sexually, but many form dense colonies of clones by a budding process called scissipary. In this process the posterior end of the worm breaks off and develops a new crown while the "parent" grows a new posterior.

Obviously they have reproduced and I am quite happy...how common is this?

All very interesting! Started with 3 and now I have 6!

Jenna
 
I started with one small hitchhiker nearly five years ago, and now I have 20+ all on one rock -- some of them several inches long. I'll post a pic in a few minutes.
 
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Here are pics I just took. I tried to count -- I have at least 30 on this one rock. They are hard to photograph because they are constantly moving and I have a lot of flow in my tank, which makes it difficult to focus.

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yea, i've got litterally hundreds of the little ones, but i only have the one big one that i bought at the lfs before christmas...

i'm constantly watching it, i've gotten to where i can even see it pooping now, and i never had a clue what worm poop looked like, but now i know, 1/8 inch long green sausages.. hehehehe
 
I have several very small ones in the chambers in the bubble trap in my sump. I figure they cant hurt anything, so I will leave them there
 
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