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?