My new acan!

[Sniperhank]

In bag

After temp acclimation

 

[spoonman]

That also looks like a brain (favite) to me. Am I wrong? My acan heads are completely separate from one another. This seems like they share edges.

 

[Sniperhank]

This is what it looks like.
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f14/upgrade-55-gal-build-194395-3.html

 

[mr_X]

I'm not saying that your specimen has anything wrong with it at all, but be watchful for acan lords that are somewhat shriveled in the sales pictures. I have seen some sort of infection kill off entire colonies. some say it's parasites, while others say it's bacterial, but whatever it is, there is no cure to date.

They should be full and extended, not all squished-looking and shrunken.

 

[Sniperhank]

It wasn't thankfully.

 

[Sniperhank]

Currently the acan isn't very happy. My blue legged hermits are curious about it. It has pulled itself back and showing its skeleton some. Hoping there is improvement by the time I come home from work.

 

[Sniperhank]

Still not showing signs of recovery. Crabs are all over it, mostly skeleton.

 

[Qube]

I had a similar situation with mine. One colony was doing great while the other was showing signs of receding and had hermit crabs perched on it all the time. That lasted for about a month and it bounced back and has new heads growing now. Probably doesn't help, but I figured I would share...

 

[Sniperhank]

Well, I'll remain hopeful. Hasn't been in there very long. Just slightly fearful after having a couple corals from my LFS die in 24 hours after being drip acclimated for an hour.

 

[crister13]

DIE in 24 hours? What? What are your parameters? And what are THEIRS?

 

[Sniperhank]

I just seem to have bad luck with picking out corals. My parameters are always 0,0,0. If i start to see some nitrates I do a water change. But it just ended up happening again with the acan. Almost all skeleton now.

 

[MacDracor]

Remember, it's not just the temp, ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. If one tank has decidedly more phosphates, different salinity, or substantially different ph, it can be a shock. But if you're dripping for an hour... That should be plenty of time. How steady is your drip? It should be fairly fast.

 

[Sniperhank]

Think of it as a slow trickle.

 

[MacDracor]

That's really strange. A slow trickle for an hour should be just fine. Any chanc you could try corals from a different fish store? This just seems... fishy...

 

[Sniperhank]

My acan i ordered off ebay. Thats like a different fish store.

 

[mr_X]

I've ordered boxes and boxes of corals. literally hundreds of acan colonies, along with many other corals and never dripped a single one. Some I didn't even temp acclimate due to the fact that the bags were compromised and were void of water. These corals were tossed right in the system and I've had much success. If this was a SPS colony I would say it could be a matter of acclimation, but I highly doubt that's the case here.

 

[Sniperhank]

It isn't my intent to say that this is because of acclimating or lack of acclimating. My background is based on trauma based care as a counselor and supervisor of such. So I see them as the same. I view acclimation of corals as the treatment of emotional and physical trauma of humans and that some trauma can be "fixed". This case, and probably my other coral "failures" were probably cases of them being to far gone, but still acclimating in an attempt to prove otherwise. The acan was probably pretty recently fragged and through that, shipping in a small bag across the country, and being added to my tank was to much for it. Because it was in a small bad with roughly enough water to fill a shot glass, could not acclimate at all in reality.