Why are my acan feelers always out?

konatown · Jul 9, 2022

I’ve read about it and see that it is just looking for food and probably hungry, but it’s a little obnoxious lol and they never really go away. I see acan colonies that don’t protrude so much and you can see the rest of the acan and it’s colors better. Just wondering why it’s doing this. I’ve grown this acan from one head and it has been through a lot but has had good stability for a long time now.

Also pictured is my other smaller acans that don’t have their feelers out as much.

They get fed often with leftover reef frenzy in the tank, and target fed at least once a week with reef roids and once a week with reef energy ab+. Sometimes 2-3x a week each food when I can. Parameters are all within range and stable. Nitrate is 2 and phos is .03-.05

Lavey29 · Jul 9, 2022

Your nitrates are quite low for LPS coral nutrition needs. Do you dose phytoplankton maybe they are trying to capture food from that source?

konatown · Jul 9, 2022

Lavey29 said:
Your nitrates are quite low for LPS coral nutrition needs. Do you dose phytoplankton maybe they are trying to capture food from that source?

Yes they are a little low. I can’t get them up, we feed like crazy, sometimes 6 times a day and we have a heavy bioload. But the corals are pretty happy and growing fast. I have mostly lps and softies

No phyto. I do want to start dosing for the pods to feed my leopard wrasse

Lavey29 · Jul 9, 2022

konatown said:
Yes they are a little low. I can’t get them up, we feed like crazy, sometimes 6 times a day and we have a heavy bioload. But the corals are pretty happy and growing fast. I have mostly lps and softies

No phyto. I do want to start dosing for the pods to feed my leopard wrasse

Well if the corals are doing fine then I would be cautious with any tweaks. But I look at it like this, if corals need more light they try to extend towards the light source. To much light and they retract. If you have an acan showing a feeding response 24 7 that may be an indicator it is not getting sufficient nutrients. Corals will look fine for many months without showing signs of nutritional deprivation then all of a sudden they turn downhill fast. I had to double dose neonitro for multiple weeks before I got measurable numbers. Sounds like you are monitoring closely and taking appropriate steps.

konatown · Jul 9, 2022

Lavey29 said:
Well if the corals are doing fine then I would be cautious with any tweaks. But I look at it like this, if corals need more light they try to extend towards the light source. To much light and they retract. If you have an acan showing a feeding response 24 7 that may be an indicator it is not getting sufficient nutrients. Corals will look fine for many months without showing signs of nutritional deprivation then all of a sudden they turn downhill fast. I had to double dose neonitro for multiple weeks before I got measurable numbers. Sounds like you are monitoring closely and taking appropriate steps.

Ah that’s a great point and makes sense. I’ve been trying to boost nitrates, haven’t been doing many water changes, not skimming much..just leaving it on for aeration..

I plan to start dosing when the alk and cal starts dropping but so far it’s fairly stable with my handful of corals. Need to start researching that. And I’m thinking I might have to dose nitrate and phosphate too if this keeps up.

I do have tiny bits of algae showing up, the glass turns green sometimes so I haven’t wanted to raise it very fast at all.

Thanks for the reply