Acan suddenly doing better in 2 years

[Treefer32]

Strangest thing I noticed this morning. I have an Acan that I've had over 2 years. It was the only one I got because I wanted to try it before getting more. I love acans and wanted to have a tank full of the puffy creatures. I've had success with them in previous tanks. However this one maybe grew 1-2 new heads in the last 2 years and maybe increased it's skeleton size by 10-20%. But the heads were always deflated, lacking in color, and generally never looked healthy. I left them alone, I've tried a variety of things over the last two years, target feeding with small shrimp and reef roids (which spiked my phosphates), I tried numerous large water changes, and so much more. It's a small frag in a 340 gallon display glue to a rock at the bottom of the tank.

I went down this morning to give the fish their daily nori sheet and the routine once over. And low and behold, my acans were huge. (compared to their lacking healthiness over the last 2 years) Puffy fully inflated, and more colorful than they've ever been since I got them. The thing is I don't know what I did, if anything that helped them.

The biggest change I've made is implementing a pelletized reactor to manage nitrates. It's going on being operational for 2 weeks now and should be helping me manage nitrates and phosphates in the next week. I've noticed new algae types growing on the glass day to day as I can only think the reactor is doing something.

I stopped dosing red Sea Trace elements a few months ago and switched to Tropic Marin All for Reef powder. I've been dosing 60 ml per day of that and dosing baked baking soda for increased alk dosing. Alk and Ca test around 8.5 dkh and 440-500.

This week I added back in the Red Sea trace elements as I've added more corals and my algae turf scrubber had slowed in producing algae. So, wondered if All For reef was not enough trace minerals in general if my turf scrubber had consumed them all.

Whatever the combination that caused the sudden overnight improvement in water quality. The acans are all puffy and colorful now! I didn't know a coral could look like it's dying for 2 years then suddenly look alive and healthy overnight (literally). I just don't want it to go backwards again. But, I do have to let it do whatever it's going to do.

If corals detect other corals around it I did at some gonipora and alveopora about 5-6 inches from it. I don't know if that would make a difference as to what's chemically near it. But, whatever I did it's working. I'll take the win!

 

[Cheeze]

You can't tease us with a great story and not share pics!

 

[G Santana]

I feel your pain, I have a small frag with two heads that I got as a freebie at Reefapalooza, it has been hit or miss regarding them being puffy. But after almost 9 months out of nowhere they gave me 5 new heads but the two main heads remain deflated. Hopefully now that the heads are feeding that they will reinflate.
I have noticed that when nitrates are high they aren't happy.

 

[Treefer32]

I feel your pain, I have a small frag with two heads that I got as a freebie at Reefapalooza, it has been hit or miss regarding them being puffy. But after almost 9 months out of nowhere they gave me 5 new heads but the two main heads remain deflated. Hopefully now that the heads are feeding that they will reinflate.
I have noticed that when nitrates are high they aren't happy.

Might be a sign my denitrator is working! Nitrates dropped by almost 10 ppm in a week - no water changes, or anything else. I'm going through a long algae period on the glass. I let the film algae grow across all four pains of glass until it's think. Then several of my fish eat it off in chunks. Then I scrape the rest and let my auto roller grab it out of the water. I hope that by doing these algae cycles on the glass, I'm burning some of the nitrates and phosphates off as well. Binding them up in film algae. (Lots of it). It's been going on two weeks, I'll scrape this week and get some close up pics of the acan. The pictures won't do it justice because it's tiny in my 340 gallon tank. But, hopefully some of the color comes through the picture.