acan retracted for a few days

[Pbh-reef]

My acan (micromussa) has been retracted for a few days (a little less than a week). Colors still seem seem just as vibrant as ever, but it is super retracted. (see pics below), in a way I've never seen before (at least for not more than a day).

I maintain parameters with esv ionic, dosing 1ml of each part by hand every day. Alk is 8.2, Cal is 440, Mag is 1350, Nitrate is close to 0.1, phosphate is 0.031ppm. Those numbers haven't changed much. The only change is I started feeding Benereef a couple weeks ago, which the acan seemed to love (got super puffy every time) but now I see no feeding response.

I had been battling hair algae by scrubbing the rocks, the hair algae has receded, but cyano has increased, I do wonder if cyano is bothering it since I disturb the sand bed to remove cyano and some gets into the water of course.

Any advice/suggestions?

 

[Pbh-reef]

also as you can see from the pics, no other corals have been impacted, including a nearby blasto, Goni, zoas, hammer coral, or sps corals located higher up...

 

[Pbh-reef]

one last thing I noticed is that my single asterina snail hasn't been doing well recently, they're not dead but they don't move much at all. My single nassurius seems fine, as do my ceriths and the collinista snails...

 

[nex64]

Is a fish maybe nipping?

If you can rule that out, maybe cyano or other algae got into the skeleton? Acans don’t really respond well when that starts to occur.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Calibrate and verify salinity. That happened to me.
Moderate light and water flow, iodine in water and ph range 8.1=8.3

 

[Pbh-reef]

Is a fish maybe nipping?

If you can rule that out, maybe cyano or other algae got into the skeleton? Acans don’t really respond well when that starts to occur.

No fish is nipping. I will try to see if cyano comes off the skeleton when I blow with a turkey baster.

Calibrate and verify salinity. That happened to me.
Moderate light and water flow, iodine in water and ph range 8.1=8.3

I did check salinity, it was 1.025. I don't dose iodine, I'll look into that. Would the acan respond differently to low iodine than other corals? I also do a 4gallon water change every week, would that be enough to keep up iodine in a low uptake 10 gallon like mine? Flow is moderate so is light, at least nothing changed from when it seemed fine.

Thank you both for your help.

 

[vetteguy53081]

No fish is nipping. I will try to see if cyano comes off the skeleton when I blow with a turkey baster.



I did check salinity, it was 1.025. I don't dose iodine, I'll look into that. Would the acan respond differently to low iodine than other corals? I also do a 4gallon water change every week, would that be enough to keep up iodine in a low uptake 10 gallon like mine? Flow is moderate so is light, at least nothing changed from when it seemed fine.

Thank you both for your help.

You can try iodine. There will likely be a response

 

[Pbh-reef]

You can try iodine. There will likely be a response

many iodine product you’d recommend in a situation like mine (nano tank dosing esv b ionic already?) Kent? Red Sea trace?

 

[Boochika]

You can try iodine. There will likely be a response

I'm having similar issues, would furan treatment work similarly? Or coral revive?

 

[Boochika]

How is the coral doing?

 

[Pbh-reef]

still very retracted butlooking a tiny bit better on average.

I just retested stuff and everything came back the same, except phosphorus, which I tested twice (hanna ULR) and it came back 0. So could that be my issue? Will feeding more increase phosphorus? I'm still waiting to get Kent iodine in the mail so haven't added that yet

 

[Boochika]

My acan is doing the same as well. I've moved it to one of the dimmest parts in my tank with very low flow. I'm going to leave it there a week and hope it recovers. Might start dosing nitrate this week too.

 

[JohnMzreef]

Although I cannot tell if this the case here, I would comment that acans will close up and eventually bail out in too little light. Although internet wisdom seems to be that they are a "low light" coral, and perhaps when compared to sps that is true, I think that they want more light than the average chalice or zoanthid.
Its good to consider water quality but don't forget lighting and flow.
And I totally agree they hate to be picked at.

 

[Pbh-reef]

Update: the acan is looking much much better, I started feeding the tank 3x a day, but I honestly think I may have accidentally damaged one polyp (the one to the right, below the main polyp) two weeks ago with a toothbrush scraping cyano/algae off the rock and that it took some time for the whole colony to react (by withdrawing). It seems to be well on the road to recovery.

I did do some more reading on benereef and saw this interview: https://reefs.com/2018/07/19/2018-reefapalooza-new-york-benepets-benereef/ It says: "Another aspect of Benereef is that it is also treating the water by supplying food to nitrifying bacteria already in the system, as well as bringing new colonies of bacteria that scavenge on ortophosphates. That results in an improved absorption capacity of the entire tank."

So I do wonder if dosing benereef dropped my phosphates down to 0. I will keep an eye on my parameters over the next few days/weeks.

Thanks so much everyone here for your advice! how is your acan doing, @Boochika?