When acans let go of their skeleton

jigga w00t

jigga w00t

Member
I bought a few acans at an expo, they were doing fine for a while. I was feeding them, trying to keep them healthy. But I think my good intentions led to overfeeding, since my nitrates have been consistently high. Recently I've been removing the sponges in my 24g nano cube and cleaning them during water changes. I removed the sponge and bio balls in the 2nd chamber, scraped off the vinyl and put in a good amount of cheato with a light source. (Which others on this board have had great success keeping their nitrates in check.)


Upon removing the sponges, there was a bunch of serpent stars in the top sponge in the first chamber. I didn't want to send them to their death, so I pulled about a dozen out and that is the only sponge I have in my tank out of the 3 that it comes with.
Ammonia and nitrites have consistently been at or near 0. I do a water change weekly (1.5-2 gallons) I have lots of live rock, probably too much, and 40 lbs live sand. Mushrooms, frogspawn, and the few zoa's seem ok, but why am I having problems with lps?



There are 2 in there, but they tend to roll around a bit, especially if a fish swims in there... Will these acans attach to a rock? Grow new skeletons? (so I have to keep them in a plastic cup for months?) What causes LPS to detach from their skeleton?
 
petjunkie

petjunkie

Active Member
Polyp bailout. Never seen acans do it before but I would say yours must be extremely stressed to do so. I had a bubble off the skeleton for months and it hadn't grown a new base or attached to the sand, I lost it behind the rocks and killed it after about three months I think. So I don't know. You could try gluing the flesh but not sure how that would take or how much damage it might cause, acans are pretty hardy though. Maybe you disturbed too much of the biological filtration taking out the sponges? Are you cleaning them in tank water? The acans still look really good which is the strange part, even the loose one looks happy. And feeding isn't necessary, they will grow faster and be puffier but they will live just fine without it, I feed mine about once a week now.
 
05xrunner

05xrunner

Active Member
hmmm...thats an odd one. never seen that but that acan you have in the jar I am guessing is the one that ran off. Looks healthy to me. Dont worry they are pretty strong. I bet it will be fine.
 
jigga w00t

jigga w00t

Member
Originally Posted by petjunkie
http:///forum/post/2916998
...Maybe you disturbed too much of the biological filtration taking out the sponges? Are you cleaning them in tank water? The acans still look really good which is the strange part, even the loose one looks happy...
During a water change, I remove the sponges and rinse them and squeeze them out in a bucket with the old water. But when I remove the sponges, I have to squeeze them a bit to get them out, and of course water is falling out of them which does leak back into the tank.
I didn't really consider it until today, but would too much flow cause an acan release itself? I didn't consider it because I had a red brain that was next to the acans, that I had placed in the front of the tank for the last 7+ months, and the flow didn't seem to bother it..

This red brain let go as well, and now it is in a plastic cup too. That's why I'm suspecting water chemistry. I just test for the usual stuff - pH, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites. Could a lack of calcium be an issue?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top