Death of a Feather Duster

[jab47303]

A few weeks ago I got a feather duster from the LFS, and a pretty healthy one at that - had a nice big crown that stayed open most all the time - from day 1.
For the past few weeks I've noticed that it's crown had been getting shorter and more ragged and the tube was receeding back into the rocks where I had placed it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. In fact, I thought it was dead by now.
Last night after the tank lights had been out for a couple of hours I took a peek in there just by the light of the TV and the larger of my 2 (usually peaceful) peppermint shrimp was ferociously tearing at the tube and reaching inside. There wasn't much I could do about it, and after a while I preferred to not watch.
I think the feather duster might still be alive this morning, but I have no way to seperate the critters and I want to keep the shrimp so what to do? Any ideas? I don't think I could pass the feather duster on in it's current condition.

 

[fishrfriends]

If sympathy helps, I just had the same problem. Not sure why, since I'm new to this myself. My peppermint shrimp did the same thing to one of my smaller feather dusters, then my starfish came along and finished it off

. I started feeding the peppermint shrimp some scallop and shrimp from the grocers - they now leave my remaining two feather dusters alone, but I have a small ammonia spike from the added food ... Good luck! Hopefully someone else can figure this out and help!

 

[jab47303]

I used to give a small feeding at night - maybe I could go back to that being as the activity seems to only take place at night. I'm always afraid of overfeeding in my small tank tho. I have enough problems keeping nitrates down right now.
Another thing, I think the shrimp has a taste for the feather duster - judging by it's persistence. I wouldn't even know how to substitute for that.