novahobbies
Well-Known Member
Can someone chime in on this?? There is an interview with Claude Schuhmacher in the Jul/Aug issue of CORAL that was very interesting...and a note almost in the beginning of the interview that shocked the HECK out of me! To quote from CORAL....
Quote:
"...there is one genus that continues to have a special fascination for me: Acanthastrea. I find their inexhaustible variety of colors simply bewitching, and the entire family of Mussidae is also very interesting in terms of its wide distribution in the wild. Besides, they are all azooxanthellate corals, which are my particular passion."
......say WHAT?? Was this a misquote, or is every store website wrong? I've been over more than a few sites, and either I'm blind (which I will allow a possibility) or NOBODY mentions the fact that Acans are completely devoid of symbiotic zooxanthellae! Is this a recent discovery that was treated as a throwaway line, or just a bad mistranslation from German?? Needless to say it surprised me, but then it got me thinking.....
Most websites say that Acans can adapt to "a wide variety of lighting systems," including even PCs, which are generally regarded as the poor backwards second cousins in the aquarium lighting family. Since PCs throw such a small amount of usable energy into the tank, it DOES stand to reason that Acans are getting their energy from other sources, such as zooplankton. They also show a very aggressive feeding response, as much as Sun corals that I've seen.
Schuhmacher also has the element of experience...he breeds MANY acans, feeds them all heavily, and boy do they grow for him. Just a few pics in the magazine are proof enough of that.
Could it be that these corals are...if not completely azooxanthellate (even though S. says they are), at least partly azooxanthellate? Could their zooxanthellae colonies be greatly reduced from corals that take in most of their energy from light?
I don't know....but I will say this. I had two fairly large, healthy Acan colonies. Both were on the sand bed, under 24 inches of water, with a 150w MH over the tank. By all accounts, they should have been fine under this light. BUT....they wasted. Slowly. I would feed them once every couple weeks, but I never targeted them. As they receded, the skeleton was taken over by cyano...and I had very little cyano in this tank, so it was somewhat odd. I would constantly be blowing cyano off the Acans only. Now my red colony is gone, with only a small frag that happened to polyp off remaining. My green colony has reduced to 4 or 5 heads...from a 20+ head colony....that I have fragged apart so there's not much dead skeleton around it.
Tell ya what, I'm going to target feed that green acan once a week and see what happens. I would love to hear from some Acan owners here....sing out and tell us what you feed / when you feed / IF you feed your acans.
Quote:
"...there is one genus that continues to have a special fascination for me: Acanthastrea. I find their inexhaustible variety of colors simply bewitching, and the entire family of Mussidae is also very interesting in terms of its wide distribution in the wild. Besides, they are all azooxanthellate corals, which are my particular passion."
......say WHAT?? Was this a misquote, or is every store website wrong? I've been over more than a few sites, and either I'm blind (which I will allow a possibility) or NOBODY mentions the fact that Acans are completely devoid of symbiotic zooxanthellae! Is this a recent discovery that was treated as a throwaway line, or just a bad mistranslation from German?? Needless to say it surprised me, but then it got me thinking.....
Most websites say that Acans can adapt to "a wide variety of lighting systems," including even PCs, which are generally regarded as the poor backwards second cousins in the aquarium lighting family. Since PCs throw such a small amount of usable energy into the tank, it DOES stand to reason that Acans are getting their energy from other sources, such as zooplankton. They also show a very aggressive feeding response, as much as Sun corals that I've seen.
Schuhmacher also has the element of experience...he breeds MANY acans, feeds them all heavily, and boy do they grow for him. Just a few pics in the magazine are proof enough of that.
Could it be that these corals are...if not completely azooxanthellate (even though S. says they are), at least partly azooxanthellate? Could their zooxanthellae colonies be greatly reduced from corals that take in most of their energy from light?
I don't know....but I will say this. I had two fairly large, healthy Acan colonies. Both were on the sand bed, under 24 inches of water, with a 150w MH over the tank. By all accounts, they should have been fine under this light. BUT....they wasted. Slowly. I would feed them once every couple weeks, but I never targeted them. As they receded, the skeleton was taken over by cyano...and I had very little cyano in this tank, so it was somewhat odd. I would constantly be blowing cyano off the Acans only. Now my red colony is gone, with only a small frag that happened to polyp off remaining. My green colony has reduced to 4 or 5 heads...from a 20+ head colony....that I have fragged apart so there's not much dead skeleton around it.
Tell ya what, I'm going to target feed that green acan once a week and see what happens. I would love to hear from some Acan owners here....sing out and tell us what you feed / when you feed / IF you feed your acans.
