What in the world happened to my ACAN?

[lanman]

My favoritest aussie acan frag - with about a dozen polyps, melted overnight. I have about 4-5 damaged-looking polyps left; I cut them away into two frags, and put one in a different tank; scrubbed the rock down really well, etc. I would swear that something attacked it - stung it - BUT there is nothing near it that could do that (unless my pink chalice suddenly grew 6" tentacles). This frag was the healthiest looking Acan in the tank! Huge polyps, ate like a pig.

 

Anyone ever seen this before? Some of the stony indentations were already completely cleaned up by hermits and stuff... several had brown jelly sitting in them. It looked GREAT just last night when I was feeding the tank, and blowing the sand out of them. The sleeper goby dumps a lot of sand on them - but it has never bothered them before; I just blow it all off at night.

 

By the way - it is in the same area of the tank as about 10 other acan colonies, all of which look just fine.

 

And wouldn't you know - I was going to cut it into two separate frags because it was growing so well!

 

bob

[Origami]

Sorry to hear the bad news, Bob. I hope that someone offers some good insight into what may have happened.

[vaironman]

a picture worth a thousand words, bob. It will help lots of us to have a better guess. Not from me, I am not an Acan guy. Follow this thread to learn more on it.

[lanman]

I 'fragged' the colony about 6 hours ago - trimming, scrubbing and scraping all the dead stuff away from the few remaining polyps. I used a toothbrush to get as close to the living polyps as possible, and put the two frags in separate tanks. As of a few minutes ago - it appears I have about 3 polyps on each of the two frags that are in decent shape - and not getting worse.

 

Pictures I could take at this point wouldn't help much - and I was in too much of a hurry to take care of the coral when I first found it messed up. The good polyps were all on one side of it - it really looks like it got 'stung' on one edge, and it was spreading across the top of the colony. But there's nothing around to sting it. I've never heard of LPS's RTN'ing - but that's what it reminds me of - the big staghorn I had RTN on me - Just rotting flesh everywhere. Smelled bad, too - when I was cleaning it up.

 

Meantime - fingers crossed. If it lives through the night, I'm thinking it will be okay.

 

On the plus side... I got my name on a nice frag of a VERY green ACAN at MS. Will pick it up Tuesday. Now I just need purple! I haven't managed to talk them out of a purple frag - they are all reserved. I didn't reserve one because when it first came in, and I was reserving - - it wasn't PURPLE!!! It colored up very nicely over the last month.

 

This is the colony that got zapped:

 

 

bob

[shawns]

fwiw this may apply to your situation?

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.p...hreadid=1369999

[lanman]

Interesting... I guess if a Duncan can RTN, so can an Acan. A flashlight inspection this morning reveals that all of the remaining polyps are still alive, and waving tentacles. Overfeeding is unlikely - I'v never spot-fed the acans; they grab what they want out of the fish feed. Sometimes I'll empty a turkey baster in their general direction. I doubt each head manages to grab more than a piece of shrimp a week. Although the micro-mussa seems to grab more than it's fair share - must have really sticky little food grabbers.

 

Hopefully get pictures of the remaining polyps when the lights come on this afternoon.

 

bob

[shawns]

if you read the rest of the rc post, they talk about overfeeding acans too. if it doesnt apply thats okay, i just thought id throw it out there.

[Reefn]

I have an aussie acan - purchased from Mr. Coral at the WAMAS event there.

 

I put it too close to the 400WMH and it rebelled. Didn't notice for days, and it lost a lot of tissue. Moved it to the bottom, and gradually moved it up to bottom third - exposed skeleton is now fully healed and new polyps are developing.

 

Haven't done any direct feeding - so can't comment on that possibility, though it seems a quite reasonable explanation.