Need help with acans possibly dying

[andrek787]

Hi All. My acans have been staying completely closed for about a week now and starting to loose their color. One of them is inflating a little bit sometimes, but two others are deflated to the skelleton. All other corals (duncans, candies, frogspawn, zoas, pavonas and birdsnest) look ok.

Water parameters:

Salinity@ 35ppt (refractometer)
Temp 77-+1deg

Nitrates@ 0.25ppt (Red Sea)
Phospates @0.12 (Red Sea)

Calc@ 410(Red Sea)
Alk@ 8.4(Red Sea)
Mag@ 1400(Red Sea)

I came really close to a crash about a week ago, temperature spiked to 82deg and salinity was nearly 1.029. My nitrates were about 16ppm about a month ago. I also have a back blenny that sometimes likes to nip at them when he cleaning the rock.

What can I do to save them? I dropped my skimmer run time to 6 hours a day and starting to doe aquavitro fuel daily.

 

[rt67ghy]

I would dip them in iodine every day for maybe 6 days and start running GAC immediately to get rid of chemicals that have probably been released over the past week. Try to keep everything constant after that.

 

[andrek787]

I have fresh GAC in its own reactor and am running 3 bags of Purigen. They are relativly small frags one is 4 heads one is just 2.

 

[andrek787]

Would coral dip work? I also have Aquavitro Vibrance (Potasium Iodide), would that work?

I do have medical iodine but I am not sure how to dilute it.

 

[Reef Bass]

Personally I would hold off on dipping. Your acans sound plenty stressed already. Sure there are less stressful dips for pests like Bayer, but if you are wanting to neutralize potential bacterial secondary infections, an iodine based dip would be more appropriate and those are stressful.

I am hearing three issues: blenny chewing, temp spike and salinity spike. Blenny chewing bad and not likely to stop. 82 is not that horrific a temp. Salinity of 1.029 is no bueno.

I suggest rehoming the blenny and keeping parameters stable. Some food could help to speed recovery if they will eat. Good luck.

 

[scooter31707]

+1^^^, also are they anywhere close to any other coral that might be bothering them also along with the blenny. Also I know alot of reefers keep their acans on near the bottom or on the sandbed. I have notice that mines did the same thing for about a week, I got the advice of moving up in the tank and see what happens. Well now they are middle way the tank with more light and it seems they are enjoying it and bigger and alot more of their colors are coming out. Just a suggestion. Good Luck.

 

[andrek787]

I had been keeping them in mid level, but moved all but one to the sand. Now they are downstream of two large zoa colonies.

Blenny came from the same tank as the acans and has never really bothered them before. I think he might be bitting them when he cleans the algae film around them. I would honestly rather keep the blenny then the acans.

 

[scooter31707]

I notice you only have a Gyre XF150 for flow inside the tank. They might be getting too much flow at the bottom. I have had luck with low to moderate flow.