Featherduster help?

[danedodger]

Quite awhile back we bought a flower leather coral with a really nice, big featherduster hitchiking on it. Weeks later we noticed that the featherduster seemed to have two crowns in the same tube (two distinct little holes each in the middle of a cluster of "feathers") and assumed that we simply had two FDs sharing the tube. Weeks after that we didn't see any featherduster in there anymore! You could see a far way down into the tube, no FD in sight (and never saw a shed crown) but a small bit of the leather could be seen growing through the tube, so sadly we assumed that the leather just annoyed the heck out of the worms so much that they jumped ship or perhaps even fought between themselves over who was going to have rights to their tube. But a few days ago a crown started peeping out of the tube again! It's much smaller though and I can't tell if it's one or two.
salinity: 1.024
ammonia: 0
nitrites: 0
nitrates: 10 (kept 20 or lower)
pH: 8.3
We spot feed the FDs, leather, and mushrooms phyto or melt a cube of frozen food over them every so often.
Is there anything I can do besides just observe and wait? I want my big glorious FD crown back!!!!

 

[celacanthr]

Just watch it, do what you have been doing. This is kinda wierd. How small is the feather? maybe the other dusters died. HTne by coincidence, a dwarf duster decided to habitat the hole?

 

[danedodger]

When they both really spread out the whole head was about 2-3" across! Now it's down to maybe 1/2" across or so.
maybe the other dusters died. HTne by coincidence, a dwarf duster decided to habitat the hole?
You mean your guess is they both died then maybe a smaller duster just took advantage of the open tube? I can't imagine where another duster could've come from though. I've only got the one tube which formerly housed the two dusters in the entire tank and haven't added more liverock that one could've hitchiked in on. The smaller one I'm seeing now has got to be at least one of the two that were originally in there.

 

[ryansholl]

My bet is that there was only one in there, the crown folded in at the middle like some of them do, for some reason it shed its crown (which I've heard they do under adverse conditions), and now it's growing it back. Feed the crown that's there. Either it's gone or it's not. Only time will tell!