help, I think my acan is sick!

[steve17]

hi all, looking for some help. maybe someone with some Acan experience.

first the vitals. the tank is days shy of 4 months old. Water parameters are very stable. I ran all the tests I had again this afternoon to be sure, but everything in the water looks good. alk is a little low, but this was dosing day and I took the test before I dosed so im not worried about that.

amonia 0
nitrates 0
ph 8.1
alk 7.0
ca 400
mg 1350

I do 15% water changes every 10 days.

the problem:
I got a purple Acan frag at the bob moore frag swap. everything has been great. coral looked good. polyps would get all big and puffy during the day, then at night feeders would come out. always seemed happy. until a fewdays ago. it started to grow what I would call white slimy looking tissue under the polyps on one side of the frag. the tissue looks soft and pourus, and sometimes stringy. Acan still looked happy until today. all day today polyps never really came out. they stayed retracted all day. just does'nt look happy.

here are links to a couple pics that I tried to take. if you guys could take a look, im hoping someone may have seen this before. so far my internet searches hasn't produced any help. thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas.

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

 

[user 26995]

How is it looking now?
They tend to do this. Mine do it at night when the lights are going out. Corals will retract if they are being irritated or picked at. Watch the fish, see if any of them are picking at it. It doesnt look like it has a fungus or anything.
How long have you had it? What do you have for lighting? How close are they to the lights? Also, are you feeding it? They can be fed mysis or other meaty foods.

 

[steve17]

Holy smokes. So all of the sudden the soft, almost slime looking stuff is gone and it's left behind what looks like a spider web of thin white threads attached to the rock that is just below the frag plug. Weird. And the polyps are starting to puff up again. Not fully open, but the biggest they've been in days.

Anyone know if Acan's build themselves a calcium structure underneath the polyp branches? Maybe that's what was going on.

IPisces, I haven't noticed any fish picking at him. I've had this coral for about 6 weeks. I'm using 2 x 120w LED fixtures. I feed this one mysis once a week. I did move it up from the sand bed to about half way up about 2 weeks ago. I wasn't seeing any new growth and thought maybe it needed a little more light. I've got another Acan that is in the middle level of the tank that has been having good growth.

I'll keep an eye on it I guess. See if the white stuff comes back.

 

[1guydude]

Hmm sounds like a tube worm of some type just filter feeding. It may live in or on ur acan frags skeleton. Yes there is a stony coral skeleton below the fleshy plump heads... sometimes I feel like I'm writing a novel. Lol
Hths
D

 

[DTECH07]

Steve17 do you have a picture of the Acan?

 

[ak_reefer]

Could possibly be a Vermitid snail they live in tubes and make a mucous spider web.

 

[steve17]

Dtech, here is a before and after picture

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

A little hard to see, but in the 2nd picture the fluffyness of the white stuff is gone. Replaced by just a web. And there is a new polyp sprouting just under the closest polyp in the pic.

 

[1guydude]

Thats prob the one I'm talkin about. Thxs ak. *

 

[steve17]

Oops, wrong pics. both of these are before shots. Here is the after pic

 

[DTECH07]

I have three and one blasto that will go through that every so often and spring right back. They'll feed one night then the next day look like deflated ballon and sickly then two days go buy and be fully open and happy again. Their growing well so I don't worry.