Acans shrinking and exposing skeleton

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

Elementalj said:
Try every other and see what happens. I've read that they can let food rot inside if overfeed.

Okay gotcha! I'll post some tank shots tomorrow when everything seems to be open mostly and all my fish are active

Elementalj · Jan 5, 2017

Mike628 said:
Okay gotcha! I'll post some tank shots tomorrow when everything seems to be open mostly and all my fish are active

Change that schedule!

BluewaterLa · Jan 5, 2017

Mike628 said:
Okay gotcha! I'll post some tank shots tomorrow when everything seems to be open mostly and all my fish are active

had this issue with lps in general two years ago and it was from Zero nutrients in the water, Nitrate and phosphate.
reduced water change schedule from 15 gallons a week to every other week and started dosing some amino acids to help the corals rebound.

now with a larger system I had the same issue with a fallow period zero nitrates so my sps and lps started to suffer some.
Acans were the first lps to decline.
started to increase feeding for the corals and cut the skimmer off for a month with no rise in nutrients due to system size and maturity of massive live rock.
Dosed potassium nitrate into the tank and raised my nitrate levels to 3 ppm. Within three hours the acans that were deflated skin tight started to puff up again.

your light intensity may be slightly low but i would concentrate on getting your nitrates up to 2 to 5 ppm and phosphates around 0.03 to 0.05
good luck and happy reefing
BluewaterLa / Mike

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

Elementalj said:
Change that schedule!

Wait how do i change it? I don't wanna move it too fast, right?

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

BluewaterLa said:
had this issue with lps in general two years ago and it was from Zero nutrients in the water, Nitrate and phosphate.
reduced water change schedule from 15 gallons a week to every other week and started dosing some amino acids to help the corals rebound.

now with a larger system I had the same issue with a fallow period zero nitrates so my sps and lps started to suffer some.
Acans were the first lps to decline.
started to increase feeding for the corals and cut the skimmer off for a month with no rise in nutrients due to system size and maturity of massive live rock.
Dosed potassium nitrate into the tank and raised my nitrate levels to 3 ppm. Within three hours the acans that were deflated skin tight started to puff up again.

your light intensity may be slightly low but i would concentrate on getting your nitrates up to 2 to 5 ppm and phosphates around 0.03 to 0.05
good luck and happy reefing
BluewaterLa / Mike

By feeding more, wont this help raise nitrates?

Elementalj · Jan 5, 2017

Mike628 said:
Wait how do i change it? I don't wanna move it too fast, right?

Make sure you've got 10 hours on, and 14 hours off.

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

Elementalj said:
Make sure you've got 10 hours on, and 14 hours off.

Ohh I got ya. Can I make the change all at once? Like from 10am to 9pm?

Elementalj · Jan 5, 2017

Mike628 said:
Ohh I got ya. Can I make the change all at once? Like from 10am to 9pm?

Might as well. [emoji6]

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

Elementalj said:
Might as well. [emoji6]

Im just scared thats gonna tick everything off

Elementalj · Jan 5, 2017

Look at it like this. Since they're receding already, you've probably got a 50/50 shot of losing, might as well make it count.

Mike628 · Jan 5, 2017

Elementalj said:
Look at it like this. Since they're receding already, you've probably got a 50/50 shot of losing, might as well make it count.

Good point haha. Wow I typed pí$s on here and it did the little stars.[emoji23]

Elementalj · Jan 5, 2017

Mike628 said:
Good point haha. Wow I typed pí$s on here and it did the little stars.[emoji23]

Careful! We're "PG" around here at the absolute worst. [emoji6]

Rick.45cal · Jan 5, 2017

Feeding more will help the nitrates and phosphates come up.

Something to remember about corals, they need food in several forms. The animal itself requires planktonic organism to prey on, in order to have the proper building blocks to physically grow it's body. It also requires light for the symbiotic algae, who require food. Their food is NO3 and PO4. (There doesn't have to be much, but there has to be some). If you don't fullfill all of those requirements your corals will slowly decline (in a low light environment) or really bad things happen really quickly too them in a high light environment.

So go slow like Elementalj has outlined and increase your light incrementally, feed more, and let your NO3 and PO4 rise to detectable levels. Let your tank find a balance.