Did I kill my Acans and Xenia?

[bcarl77]

I may have killed my acans, xenia, and trumpet coral. It all started when I noticed something was off last Saturday evening when my hammer coral and frogspawn weren’t fully extended.

Here are my typical tank parameters
Ph:7.9-8.2
KH9
P:0
N:5
Salt1.026

I wanted to retrace my steps so here is what I changed during the last week
-Monday,Wednesday, Friday: Turkey basted the sand in sections of 1/4, 1/4, 1/2 respectively to try to clean and remove detritis (Sand bed is about 2 inches and is vacuumed weekly)
-Fed Red Sea reef energy A&B (.5ML of each solution 3 times during the week, 17 gallon tank with about 13 gallons water volume)
-Saturday added 2 nassarius snails
-Sunday performed weekly water change

On Monday I noticed my Xenia stopped pulsing, acans close and same problem with frogspawn and hammer. That prompted me to look and see what was going wrong.

Ran a full parameters and the only that was off was Phosphate levels which came back with a reading of .64.

Performed 30% wc and replaced GFO.

Tested Phosphate early Tuesday and came back with a 0.

Acans are now losing flesh/dead, and retracted. Xenia still not pulsing. Hammer and frogspawn look just about back to normal. All soft corals outside the xenia look fine.

I think the turkey basting led to a rapid amount increase of phosphate as I exhausted the GFO over the week with basting. Now I lowered the phosphate too fast and shocked corals.

Is my thinking correct, or is there something else amiss?

 

[bcarl77]

 

[bcarl77]

Anyone? I performed a lugols dip last night

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I would cut back on the amount of gfo and double test alk. You don't want 0 po4. The phosphate swing is likely the issue here.

 

[bcarl77]

Are acans more sensitive to phosphate swing?

I have seem feeders come back out on my trumpet corals at night so that is encouraging...

The xenia is still very shriveled not sure if they will survive.

I noticed when dipping small white/translucent bugs coming out of the rocks. Pretty positive they are just pods? Correct?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Very likely, they look like little shrimp almost.

Yes acans can be a bit sensitive at times. They like clean water, but also love to be fed. I've fed mine frozen mysis, pellet fish food... reef roids gets the biggest results tho. Mix the powder up with just enough water to make a paste you can suck up with a syringe. Squirt the paste onto the acan mouth like you're making an ice cream cone with a soft serve machine. They will fluff way up and suck in every bit of food.

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Careful with reef energy to. I only do it twice a week in my 20g. .5ml and it raises my phosphates about .01 each time i dose it.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Just to add a bit, I recently removed my chaeto to a holding tank because it was stripping the water of nutrients too well. My nitrates and phosphates have come up a good bit now to 10ppm and 0.3ppm. My acans are looking like yours, kinda half inflated. Nutrients before were 0ppm and 0.08ppm. Went too far in the other direction.