Attn acan collectors

[treehugger]

Sorry for the bold title but I've been an avid acan collector for over 5 years now. As some of you have seen, I have over 90 different color morphs. Up until about a month ago, I've had no issues with the corals, however, in the last three weeks I've seen nearly 75% of my collection blow up for no logical reason. Water conditions have remained stable, lighting stable, nothing else seems to be affected. They look totally normal one minute and literally within 24 hours entire colonies lift and blow off of the skeleton. The polyps look like little zoas floating around and if they're not removed they quickly become brown jelly. I know they are prone to brown jelly but I've never seen anything like this. Any thoughts. I've tried removing to different tanks, Iodine dips, coral rx dips, fraggin, all with no success at stopping it. The stranger thing is that it affected certain color acans first and has progressed. Frags of the same colony that had been fragged for over a year blew apart within hours in different locations in the tank. It's really blowing my mind and driving me insane. Any thoughts or suggestions welcomed. Sorry for the long post but I've lost close to 4 grand in acans in three weeks.

 

[zestyreefer02]

Sorry for the bold title but I've been an avid acan collector for over 5 years now. As some of you have seen, I have over 90 different color morphs. Up until about a month ago, I've had no issues with the corals, however, in the last three weeks I've seen nearly 75% of my collection blow up for no logical reason. Water conditions have remained stable, lighting stable, nothing else seems to be affected. They look totally normal one minute and literally within 24 hours entire colonies lift and blow off of the skeleton. The polyps look like little zoas floating around and if they're not removed they quickly become brown jelly. I know they are prone to brown jelly but I've never seen anything like this. Any thoughts. I've tried removing to different tanks, Iodine dips, coral rx dips, fraggin, all with no success at stopping it. The stranger thing is that it affected certain color acans first and has progressed. Frags of the same colony that had been fragged for over a year blew apart within hours in different locations in the tank. It's really blowing my mind and driving me insane. Any thoughts or suggestions welcomed. Sorry for the long post but I've lost close to 4 grand in acans in three weeks.

Hey Jeff.....not to be a smart A** but welcome to my world.....we had the same issue. not just different locations in tank but two completely different systems. One possible issue we found was current in the system. One location had a fish or two that nipped abit and once acans were damaged we think the current shocked the s**t of the acans(pun intended). We couldnt find really any other issues so there is my two cents....check for current

 

[chrisdaphish]

I don tknow if i'm allowed to link to other websites so if this gets deleted, just pm me and let me know

I also don;t know if this is the same issue as yours.. but...

there was a thread about this along time ago on some other reef site. a member was just losing top notch chalices and then acans and stuff.

here is the thread

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1400291

the first few pages is sorta a lot of speculation and just ideas, but later in the thread is some more information.

I havent read the thread recently, and i'm just going on memory, and hopefully this helps, if not i wish u luck

 

[estanoche]

I lovingly call it "the melties". Lost quite a few colonies to it unfortunately.

Once 1 colony starts, even frags from that colony all the way across the tank start to go... It is boggling.

Knock on wood - a couple months ago I managed to save a frag.

The story:

My large red acan colony started melting, polyp by polyp, day 1 3 polyps gone, I didn't wait until day 2, I've seen this before and knew half a colony or more would be gone by the morning - I aggressively fragged it (i mean fragged it 2 or 3 heads into the "healthy" part), and threw the affected part into a separate tank(probably 3/4 of the colony), away from the system. The throw away part died within a day, my cleanup crew had a hayday.

The "healthy" frag was then placed in a very very indirect flow, dedicated safety area (a gladware container with holes drilled into it for circulation) so fish, CUC, any anything else couldn't bother it.

After 2-3 weeks I finally felt safe enough to pull it out of the container, and it is still healthy.

Who knows if I'm right, but it did work.... Sucks tho losing a 50 head colony, and only having 5 leftover.

 

[tamarindthai]

from my experienced:all of my acansss that i used to have melt away from me after the short period of time in the DP tank,,then my janitors star to clening up bigtime thanks them with out them i will have the poluted my tank with chemocal released by acan,,i was blaming those janitors of the first i saw eating acan,,,then i just realize it is the chemical warfare,,,glad that the acan die ,,,not my sps,,,learning and i am still learning everyday,,,JMO
sorry jeff,,to hear about your lost.

 

[treehugger]

I don tknow if i'm allowed to link to other websites so if this gets deleted, just pm me and let me know

I also don;t know if this is the same issue as yours.. but...

there was a thread about this along time ago on some other reef site. a member was just losing top notch chalices and then acans and stuff.

here is the thread

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1400291

the first few pages is sorta a lot of speculation and just ideas, but later in the thread is some more information.

I havent read the thread recently, and i'm just going on memory, and hopefully this helps, if not i wish u luck

I can't thank you enough for that link. It sounds spot on to what is happening. I did add a new wild colony of acans almost around the time of this issue. I did dip but apparently it wasn't enough. The ironic thing is that the wild colony looks great. My guess is that the aquacultured colonies have lost any resistance to these parasites over time. I'm going to examine the corals closely for these mysterious "black bugs" that seem to be a common thread with this issue. I just pray my 50 different chalices don't meet the same fate.....i'll keep everyone posted

 

[treehugger]

ps...for all of you that are looking for an interesting thread to read, read the above reefcentral thread. The first few pages are blah but it gains steam as it progresses.

 

[trido]

Sorry to hear Jeff.

 

[treehugger]

this is what happens when your tank/corals get around without proper protection ...it's the equivalent of coral STDs (AEFW, Red Bugs, Monti Nudi's, Zoa Nudi's...and the list continues to grow)

 

[WA coral]

I didnt read the whole thread on RC but I think it was the one on interceptor?? if not you may want to try that it works great and you kill 2 birds with one stone red bug and lps parasite

 

[luisse25]

this happened to me...acans and chalices...receding,not sendng out tentacles and dont eat like the tentacles dont grab food then bailing out and or melting...
its just slowly receding,theres like a white slimy string line on the receded part and i keep blowing it out..its like something is eating it slowly...i did what i can do..dips and dips...i manage to save 2 colonies of acans..the rest of my lps either melted and the save ones are receded..it just stopped when i moved everything to a new tank..
i remember i keep adding colonies and colonies of acans...i lost 4 acan colonies and 3 no name chalices also blastos...i manage to trade and sell 2 high end chalices.

also my mag was low...

it is tough and really frustrating...after what happened for a while i am scared to add acans and or chalice...

hope u can solve this problem...and sorry to hear this

 

[Palancar]

Here is a post that I did on our regional forum on what I did when we were hit with the same thing. Black Bugs is the LPS equivalent to Red bugs of Acros. If you have not been touched by them you do not want the experience. We have now had the experience, and I will pass on what we have learned over the past month and a half. The bugs seem to affect Acans and Chalices, but I’m sure they can affect just about any LPS. As for the symptoms it is normally fast tissue recession for no explained reason. Now this recession will not be associated with brown jelly slime. When I first noticed on one of our colonies it started at one side, the polyps along the leading edge would not inflate or expand and the flesh would disappear over night. The first thing I check was the system parameters to verify every thing was where it needed to be and it was. Things that I tried were dipping with Kent Marine coral dip (basically iodine) and ReVive. I used according to the instructions and nothing. After doing some research I tried the following dips or baths from one to four hours thinking along the lines of a bacteria infection or fungus, API tetracycline powder at a dosage of 1 packet per gallon of tank water (no effect), Furan 2 at a dosage of 1 capsule per gallon of tank water (no effect), and last an Iodine bath at a dosage of 10 ml per gallon of tank water (seem to slow it down). I did more research and found that culprit was a black bugs and Interceptor would kill it. While not actually seeing the bugs and only going from the symptoms and getting desperate I treated the one tank. Two days after the first treatment the deflated polyps reinflated. It is recommended to do three treatments with Interceptor a week apart and water change after each treatment. I have read of people using carbon after the treatment with no bad effects. This is the route I went with and after each treatment I would use fresh carbon to remove the medicine but I was only treating the Acan tank. I got lax on doing the treatment time table and paid for it, they came back. I am in the process of catching all our shrimp and crabs to isolate them for the three total system treatments over the next 3 weeks after which I will do the water change. I even built a special tank to fit over the vat for the purpose. One thing I did notice is at 3 times the recommended dosage in the Acan tank the arcos gave off some slime but once the medicine is removed everything was fine. The recommend dosage is 1 tablet will treat 360 to 380 gallons; treatment time is for 6 hours. I have figured out a way to break down the dosage of the tablet, you crush the tablet into a fine powder with a pill crusher then finish the job between two spoons. To measure the dosage I used a Chemi-pure spoon (white spoon) or you can use a Salifert test kit blue spoon. I measured out with the white spoon and one 23 mg tablet is 9.75 level spoons, guessing on the .75 measurement. I haven't measured out the blue spoon yet. I can tell you the treatment does work I just completed our second system treatment. The recession has stopped and we are now getting unreal polyp extension or expansion now.

 

[chrisdaphish]

I can't thank you enough for that link. It sounds spot on to what is happening. I did add a new wild colony of acans almost around the time of this issue. I did dip but apparently it wasn't enough. The ironic thing is that the wild colony looks great. My guess is that the aquacultured colonies have lost any resistance to these parasites over time. I'm going to examine the corals closely for these mysterious "black bugs" that seem to be a common thread with this issue. I just pray my 50 different chalices don't meet the same fate.....i'll keep everyone posted

I'm glad that i could help. Good luck!

 

[treehugger]

so I started treatment today....what a pain in the a$%....we had just put 25 cleaner shrimp in our system...not an easy task to catch them. It was a bit more expensive then I imagined but we are treating 1300 gallons...I'll keep you guys posted on results...so far, corals all started feeding very heavy within like 4 hours of initial treatment