Eaten Acans

[AirForceAquariu]

So I have 2 questions about some Acans I recently purchased. Here is a little background: I brought them home a week or so ago and had them dipped and in the tank by noon or so. Around 2030 at lights out I noticed a whole polyp was missing. Around it were a gorilla crab (caught and removed) mithrax crab, peppermint shrimp, and my cleaner shrimp. None were actively eating it at the time so I am not sure the culprit.

1) Is there any long term harm to keeping it under a plastic fruit container to recover?

2) How long will it take for the polyp to grow back? I have noticed some flesh returning to one edge of the skeleton.

 

[Art13]

I cut a head in half at one point when i fragged it, grew back in about a month, it can vary though. I pulled my peppermint shrimp from the tank as when i fed the acans they were right there attempting to pull the acan apart to get to the food. They can possibly be an issue, many people have had problems with them and lps, and he also tore up my feather duster. As for the mithrax, i have had two emerald crabs, i believe the same thing, but mithrax are red? i cought them one night picking apart an sps and pulled them, I haven't confirmed them going after any sps though. I have two more in my tank now but no LPS so i can't say one way or another if they would.

 

[AirForceAquariu]

Correct, they are red mithrax. Live rock hitchhikers. They are actually a breeding pair which is pretty neat (nothing that survives but I figure the eggs are a tasty treat). They don't seem interested in fish or SPS, Zoas, or LPS up to this point. This is my first Acan though. The male has gotten quite large thought ... almost to big so his appetite may change....

 

[Art13]

Mine were fine for months, one day i noticed skin missing on my green stag sps, i looked in one night after lights off and he was there munching. Grabbed a net and snagged him (quite east to catch), and gave him away the next day.

 

[sciencemike]

My peppermints decimated my Zoanthid colonies. They tore the skirt off of >15 polyps while I watched in horror. At first I thought they were cleaning the. As they tore them apart it became obvious that the large pieces they were tearing off wwant standard cleaning. It took months for them to recover.

 

[AirForceAquariu]

Peppermints must be hit or miss. He and that gorilla crab I caught are my prime culprits. My Zoas are fine but everyone's peppermint seems to have a different appetite for destruction.

 

[Nate32185]

Ah that is terrible. I hate waking up to discover something was mowing down some of my beautiful lps. For me it was peppermint shrimp. I had a aptasia issue and picked up an army of peppermints (8) and in two days there wasn't an aptasia anemone in sight. I guess they exhausted their food source and got use to eating live things. Over the next week my acans were looking progressively worse. Then one night I gazed in the tank and cought the little buggers ripping chunks off them. It was horrible. There was nothing I could do. I lost almost every colony.

 

[AirForceAquariu]

I do have a single peppermint. Might have been the culprit. I am still trying to catch one of the dang gorilla crabs. My bottle trap has caught every detritivore in the tank except it. I came down one morning to a bashful looking cleaner shrimp stuck in there patiently waiting to be let out.

In good news, I have covered them with a plastic berry container (food grade and plenty of holes for flow) and fed them a bit. The exposed skeleton is completely covered with flesh and a polyp seems to be developing again! Yay!