What am I not doing for my Acan?

[Crush Coral]

Got this buy about 4 months ago. The heads were 3 times the size they are now. It was red and healthy. The heads slowly shrank in size and have turned from red to pink to light pink. It does not have a dozen heads starting to grow. I have recently started target feeding it, I had not been. What am I not giving it? Tank has many other happy corals. It is placed on the sandbed, has 4X54 T5 Powermodule. I am thinking the problem is diet but not sure.

Thanks

 

[seapug]

looks bleached out. Have you tried putting it in a shaded, stable spot up off the sand?

 

[Crush Coral]

I have not moved it off the sand bed. Do Acans like low light? I have my lights on in the following manner - 2X54 actinic for 7 hours, the other two additional bulbs are on for 4 hours.

 

[seapug]

too much light is the most common reason I've seen for Acans to lose color. They can recover quite quickly if all other factors are ok, so try giving more shade for a couple weeks and see if there's any improvement.

 

[Crush Coral]

I will try that. Here is a better pic. Finially found the macro setting on my daughter's camera. Thanks for the help.

 

[tamn3]

I have 400W 14k bulb on mine and the acans are in the upper part of the tank. Mine seem to do better with more lighting.

 

[Dream2aReef]

Mine are under halides, on top of the LR, mid tank and no shade.

 

[Crush Coral]

anyone heard of bleaching from too little light?

 

[Sophie10]

I have one in the middle of a 65 gallon with, hold on to your hats, 2 x 39W T5's. The Acan seems to be thriving. I don't target feed, but I do add ova or cyclopeze or phyto after dark some nights. The tank is pretty much LPS and they are all growing quite well. I will be bumping the lights soon, when I have some coin(!) , but until then, the Acan will remain in the middle of a low light tank!

Do you have anything bothering it? Maybe a goby? When you target feed, does a shrimp or crab try to take it's food? These things can take it's toll on a little coral.
Hope it improves, Crush

 

[Crush Coral]

Nothing seems to be bothering it. Guess I will try less lights for 2 weeks and if that does not help I will try more lights. I thought these things were suppose to be pretty tough.

 

[Glazner]

update?

 

[ticklem]

You can try feeding it some Mysis that might help heal it but it does look bleached.

 

[rtparty]

Couple things I will throw out there from my experience with ATI fixtures and acans.

Unless your tank is over 24" tall, you need to shade the acans under an ATI fixture. You are probably somewhere between 250-300 PAR on your sandbed. I found those numbers will melt LPS in a short amount of time.

What is your magnesium reading? If my Mg ever dropped down to 1200 or lower, my acans lost color pretty quick. So check your Mg out.

I also found that acans really should be fed at least once a week with some meaty food. I liked using Mysis shrimp for mine. I could get my frags to go from 5 heads to 10-12 within a couple weeks.

Here is a pic of my tank, I had about 7 or 8 acans in there at one point.

Hope that helps.

 

[Piper27]

Someone gave me the same kind a while back and it was bleached worse than yours, it was all white. I put it in a shaded area and it came back after a few months.

 

[dkerns06]

I've never had any luck with my acans. Had one colony recede to the point that there is only a few 1/8 bits of tissue on it and another on receded, not as bad, but it never opens up. I don't get it at all. I have duncans and some frogspawn and they both grow like crazy. I have a 250 watt mh bulb, 12k, and all my levels are perfect. I'm probably just going to give them away if they don't start perking up soon. I just moved them back so they are getting less light on the sand bed so I guess ill see how that goes. I just chalk it up to bad luck with certain corals tho.