acan slowly dying?

Virtual Balboa

Virtual Balboa

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I have an acan in my tank that has been doing great for the last 8 months or so. I noticed a couple weeks ago that there are spots where a few of the polyps appear to be showing their skeletons. The polyps that are affected still expand during the day but it's as if half of them is dead. What could be causing this to happen out of nowhere and is there a safe way to frag it so that the whole colony doesn't die.
 
On a reef it would be fed every night and every poylp would get something. They are easy when small but when they get big its tedious to feed each polyp
 
It's not huge..maybe something like 10 polyps but it started as 3 so I figured it was doing well. I see several new polyps growing out on the bottom. I usually spot feed it mysis but I don't aim for every one. Any better feeding ideas? I'm just worried about it wasting away.
 
I have one that shows the same signs I tried feeding it every night and it seems to be responding better now. I have had a large piece die because it was not fed at all. These corals generally come from dirty water areas with large concentrations and populations of food
 
My water parameters are pretty good although I'm still afraid to try sps due to a couple algae outbreaks and nitrate at 2 ppm last time I checked. What do you mean by dirty water concentrations? Also, how much light do you give yours?
 
Do you have a picture you can post? When feeding my acans I mix a slurry of Reef Frenzy, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, cyclops and tank water. This direct feeding I do twice a month. I do however twice a week broadcast feed the reef frenzy or cyclops. It so far for me has been keeping my acans and micromusas very healthy. They do not need to be direct fed mysis everyday. Actually IMO and IME they really get a lot of of the water column so by doing the broadcast feeding with the plankton mix of Reef Frenzy or any other similar type of coral food they will get a huge benefit. I have a Bower Banki and it had a spot that I'm not sure what happened to it but it was showing a tiny bit of skeleton. I didn't do anything accept watch it and feed the way that I do. It healed up within a week. If you continue to see flesh recession I would honestly think of doing an iodine dip, because it could have an infection and the iodine will kill that infection
 
Heres a pic. Sorry about the quality.
IMAG0697.jpg
 
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It's difficult for me to get a good photo zoomed in. What's happening there is part of the polyps are missing and showing skeleton.
 
Dkuhlmann said:
Do you have a picture you can post? When feeding my acans I mix a slurry of Reef Frenzy, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, cyclops and tank water. This direct feeding I do twice a month. I do however twice a week broadcast feed the reef frenzy or cyclops. It so far for me has been keeping my acans and micromusas very healthy. They do not need to be direct fed mysis everyday. Actually IMO and IME they really get a lot of of the water column so by doing the broadcast feeding with the plankton mix of Reef Frenzy or any other similar type of coral food they will get a huge benefit. I have a Bower Banki and it had a spot that I'm not sure what happened to it but it was showing a tiny bit of skeleton. I didn't do anything accept watch it and feed the way that I do. It healed up within a week. If you continue to see flesh recession I would honestly think of doing an iodine dip, because it could have an infection and the iodine will kill that infection
Click to expand...

Is an iodine dip better than a dip in coral rx? Because I have coral rx here. Also, it seems people like to use different sources of iodine. Some from the pharmacy, some use kent's lugols. Have any recommendations?
 
They're for two different things. No you can't dip in Coral RX over the Iodine. Iodine kills infection and bacteria, Coral RX kills pests.

You can get iodine at any drug store, or grocery store that has a health isle. Make sure you get iodine and not iodide.

The faster you do this the better chance it has for survival. A guy here a few weeks ago didn't even check back on his thread for 5 days, well his coral didn't make it. If you want a chance at it's survival you'll go get iodine this morning.
 
The coral rx website states that their product is supposed to work for stn. That's why I asked. Also, do you have any idea about how strong I should make the iodine mixture?
 
So after the dip the Acan looks pretty unhappy with me. Slimmed over quite a bit when I put it back in the tank. Just now slowly starting to see some color coming back so I guess that's a good sign. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one!
 
Oh, they don't like the iodine dip that's for sure. We dip all newly fragged corals in iodine before being put in the frag tanks, this is to promote healing and keep infection and bad bacteria at bay.

Follow the directions in the link and do your other dips as they're suggested for fighting the bacteria.
 
I'll read up on that. Has anyone ever heard of a brittle star picking on lps? There's a brittle star that stays in the rock right under the acan. It usually feels around with its arms and touches it. It'll even steal food from it if I don't feed it before spot feeding. One night I turned the light on in the tank and either saw the brittle star or a bristleworm touching the coral. Whatever was going on stopped as soon as I shined a light towards it. I know I have bristleworms but don't know if they're the bad ones or not.
 
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