Acans receding - looking for suggestions on possible causes
 

All of my corals have been unhappy lately, due to a lack of food
I've doubled the fish food, and started using coral frenzy 2-3 times per week, plus coral vitalizer daily, and some julian's phyto thrown in for good measure

Because my corals were starting to bleach due to a lack of zooxanthellae, I took a suggestion and cut about 8 hours of T5s out of the day, and currently am running 12 hours of blue plus, and 9 hours of 14k coral lite 2 next gen

About a week or so ago, I added some brightwell's aminomega to the coral frenzy. This is right before I noticed the recession

Other than that, the only other thing that's changed is I have gone from 7-10 day WCs to 14 day WCs in an effort to get some nitrates and phosphates

Alk 7.5
Ca 410
Mag 1350-1400
Potassium 3-400
Phosphates >0.05
Nitrates 0
Sg 1.025
pH 8.0-8.15
79F

Any tips, suggestions, thoughts, etc will be greatly appreciated :smile:

I'm not sure I follow, are you saying the corals bleached because you weren't feeding them or because there was too much light? Not feeding a coral won't cause it to bleach, only too much light, too hot, or wild swings in parameters cause bleaching as far as I know.

I think cutting back on your lighting was a good place to start, but some LPS have a really hard time coming back from that once it's happened. I bleached a small colony of blastos by putting them too high in my main tank and it took them nearly 4 months to finally die, but I think they were doomed from the start.

If you will look on ULNS, you will notice near bleached pale colors and opposite system with higher phosphates and nitrates has darker colors. I'm not sure if it's the case, but potentially you can bleach you corals if they are not getting enough nutrients.

I would suggest a strictly SPS tank for you. LPS, in general require a little more lax approach to water conditions than I think you're use to. I would also suggest your Alk is a little on the low side. Maybe adding all those food suppléments is a short time frame has sent the water conditions yo-yoing too much. :question:

The theory is;
There wasn't enough food, so the zoo went away, and the intense light then started to 'bleach' the SPS as it wasn't protected 'lightwise'
The LPS are also a bit lackluster colorwise

Yup, this is the path they have taken, we think

I understand there is sometimes a bit of a balance to keep SPS and LPS together, parameter wise

The food supplements weren't added right off, but a couple weeks after the fish food was doubled. The biggest noticable change colorwise was after upping the fish food - to the good. This is why the coral foods were started
I have some come-back of HA, but nothing unmanageable

I've upped my dosing timers to increase my Alk and Ca a bit as raising the KH was suggested by another just a day or two ago. I'm going to try and target up to 8dkh and see what the Ca does. Hopefully it will be easy enough to get it stable in the 420ish range

Bye the way, thanks for the input guys :smile:

So, anyone have any other thoughts on why my acans decided to recede ? Just a random head here and there
One colony has shrunk 50% around the ring - as in from 1 to 8 o'clock, another the head just vanished, and a third is going from the outside-in
Nothing the same between the 3 different corals

They were dipped and inspected last friday and nothing showed up in the dip water
Plus, the dip gave no improvement

I'm bumping this up for the night as I missed the cut-off for 'new posts' and am still looking for some help

Did you try to feed you corals, not just fish?

I'm not spot feeding as I found the corals won't hold onto what I give them
I tried chopped mysis, brine and then cyclopeeze
Only the cyclops were taken in, but they also eat it when it's just dumped in
So, I stopped trying to spot feed

I'm adding coral vitalizer daily while the return pump is still on ( probably some of it is being wasted, but I don't like turning off my return as it upsets the balance in my chaeto tank )
I feed coral frenzy 2-3 times per week, and turn the pump off for 15mins
Last night, for the first time, I fed powdered phyto, and 15mins off
I'll probably feed the phyto at the same time as the frenzy

Well, it looks like we're going to lose all 3 of our aussie acans
The recession has sped up a bit and I estimate that they'll all be gone in another week :sad:

The ONLY other thing I've changed lately is;
I was using GFO from Chin Lee's group buy last summer. It ran out, so now I'm using BRS hi cap

I'm going to do a 15% WC tomorrow and I guess I'll cross my fingers ...

Could you please clarify your lighting & the schedule its on? When you say you cut 8 hours of T5/ day do you mean you were running your lights @ 20h/day?

Oh, the other thing that's changed is I stopped the wild Alk and Ca swings when I added dosing pumps on Feb 9th

Tonight my test results are;
7-7.5
4-410

My other acans are still doing very well

I'm going to go back to my original WC routine ... I can't think of any other changes

8X54w ATI Powermodule

Originally;
2 Blue plus 11am-11pm
2 Coral II 14K 12pm-9pm
2 Coral 10K 12pm-6pm
1 Coral II and one Fiji Pink 2pm-4pm

I turned off the 10ks and the Coral II Fiji pair, but the recession started before this

Besides the change in the GFO source, the biggest thing I've done lately is the nearly-doubled fish food amount

No changes in location of acans, flow, lighting, husbandry etc before the recession started
Just the addition of coral frenzy 2-3 times/week, mixed in a cup of RO and poured into the tank in front of an MP10 with the return pump off for 15mins

No new fish, inverts etc
A new turaki, pink birdsnest, favia and green slimer, but not added anywhere near the acans. New corals were dipped in Revive and rinsed before attaching with Ecotech Coral Glue

Skimmer cup is cleaned once a week, socks are changed once a week

Param refresher;
79f Callibrated against numerous thermos
1.025 Sg Callibrated last week
pH 8-8.15 Callibrated 2 weeks ago
Alk 7-7.5 Elos
Ca 410 Elos
Mag 1350 Elos
Potassium 3-400 Elos
NH3/4 zero Ammo badge and Elos
NO2 zero Seachem
NO3 zero Seachem
PO4 0.04 Hanna

Equip;
2 part dosers
Tunze ATO zero TDS RO
Same Carbon since last june
BRS HC GFO

I just tested for voltage with a Fluke 334 ( $250 meter );
0.00volts

Only the aussie acans are dying
The rest of the softies, LPS and SPS, and the bubble tip, are either unchanged, or are starting to color back up
No weird fish or invert indications .... nadda for signs besides some increased HA after the addition of the extra foods. And we lost one lettuce nudi that melted away in the tank. The other 3 nudis are still eating away and getting bigger

Couldn't be the rotted nudi, could it ????

I'm racking my brain for anything else

It is what it is. No one has a perfect record with corals. What does fine in your tank may die in mine. Stop the constant tinkering I'm not sure how you could possibly be enjoying this hobby. Failure is enivitable, it will happen. Toss the acans and move on.

I totally agree with your synopsis ... I am only trying to save these poor critters

Maybe someone close to me reading this would like to trade something ...

And as for the tinkering and enjoying, ya, if this carries on much longer, I'll give the dead lumps away :razz:
I've definately got more important things to do right now than worry about these little things

I'd like try to trade, what do you looking for your acans?

I'll PM you Din

any updates? what has happened to the Acans?

Greg I had weł over $4500 in colonies ans lost them all to what u had it was like one by one. Receeding some say it was from the intense lighting the same thing happened with my Scollies. It was weird the only thing to go was the scans all SPS were great other then the acans. They talk about acans having in contacta disease from them touching each other.

I have the same thing happening with my euphyllia. One head takes about a week to fall off and then just when you think no more are going to die, another head falls off. Maybe on the same one maybe on a different one. It is just slowly working its way around my tank. Lost over 50 heads so far.

I've had this happen a time or two with acans. mostly colony's on rock. Cutting off the dead parts I've found the rock to have very foul smelling black holes, and in some cases a very small bright red worm. The worm isn't any thicker than a piece of string and maybe an nice long. If I notice an acan even looking slightly off now I give it a soak with a tiny bit of hydrogen peroxide. It seems to perk them right up.

Funny you ask. I just found one of my most fave acans in the clutches of the black longspined urchin, with the Ecotech coral glue busted loose
Could just be a coincedence, but now I'm wondering ...
I didn't find anything on the web about urchins eating acans :noidea:
Yesterday, this particular colony was fine, now it's missing more heads
The rest of the receding acans are unchanged

Mike, I've cut my lighting way back, so I'm hoping to see a difference

Shelley, I read about someone losing acans and finding a kind of bristleworm in the skeleton. Kinda like being eaten from the inside out maybe ...

Seriak, it seems that none of us can keep all the kinds of corals we want to. Some of us lose 'this one', and some 'another'
I'm just happy to not have lost most of ours :wink:

I just pulled out the acan that is currently suffering the most as I found it in the clutches of the urchin last night and was preparing to re-glue it

I decided to remove all the old glue first and wouldn't you know it, there are worms inside the underside of the skeleton :surprise::surprise:
It's currently in a dip and I'll post pics once I'm done

Hopefully this is the cause and the recession will end

There were 3 worms in the skeleton. Looks like fireworms maybe ?
This is the largest of them - about 1/2" long

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps09b11166.jpg

wow I better make sure I dip everything before I put it into my tank now, Scary after seeing what happened and what pest may tag along.

The worms I've found before are red and more thread like.. No bristles. They live in tiny holes burrowed into the skeleton. Soak in water with a bit of Hydrogen peroxide seems to get em out!

Good tip :smile:
I used Revive and they came out a'running right away :twised:

I've decided to keep feeding my SPS and let the Acan chips fall as they may :lol:
Too bad 'cause they were nice critters

The SPS are bouncing back nicely