Coral woes.. Help a newbie.. You once were one!

[carriej]

Ok - admittedly I came into this relatively confident. I thought a lot of my freshwater high tech planted skills would cross over into the coral realm.

WOMP.

Not true.

The second I put corals in my tank I knew this was the case. I had a "Oh my god. What have I done" moment.

Ok... I have several issues.

Acans - what do they need. I killed the big one (cut it in half... on accident of course), but luckily there is a itty bitty baby beside it! I feel much better. I don't want to kill it. I'm not sure why it isn't happy, or what it's beef is. It's all flat and not puffed up like I see in pictures.

Pink hairy mushrooms -Are now white. Yep. Bleached. I had them in a shadowed area and they didn't seem to be expanding so I put them on the sand bed and now they are white. I fed them some bits of oyster today and they ate that. What should I do? I put them back in the shaded place.

WHAT IS THIS? People tell me candycane. But it does not look or eat like my green candycane unless this is normal. It eats like an open brain and the purple outside part comes all the way over. It's also got this weird lump in it's purple thing that looks like a bubble. Seems to come and go.


There are little sadistic creatures running amok on my zoas! I don't know what they are. Some type of pod. They have legs, antennae and are clearish like all the rest - I can't get a picture. I tried. They are longish and skinny. They aren't eating the zoas.. But irritating them enough that most stay only half open.

My torch coral doesn't seem to want to extend really at all. This is the most I can get it to extend. It gets all puffy sometimes too... Sometimes it randomly just shrinks right up to nothing. Then 30 minutes later it's not.



Any advice would be appreciated.