Cali Kid Corals

Acan retracted for 10 days, advice?

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pbh-reef

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My acan (micromussa) has been retracted for a few days (a little more than a week). Colors still seem seem just as vibrant as ever, but it is super retracted. (see pics below), in a way I've never seen before (at least for not more than a day).

I maintain parameters with esv ionic, dosing 1ml of each part by hand every day. Alk is 8.2, Cal is 440, Mag is 1350, Nitrate is close to 0.1, phosphate is 0.031ppm. Salinity is 1.025. Those numbers haven't changed much. The only change is I started feeding Benereef a couple weeks ago, which the acan seemed to love (got super puffy every time) but now I see no feeding response.

I had been battling hair algae by scrubbing the rocks, the hair algae has receded, but cyano has increased, I do wonder if cyano is bothering it since I disturb the sand bed to remove cyano and some gets into the water of course. I did notice one smaller polyp seemed unhappy, then the big (original polyp) and now all 7 polyps. I don't have any fish that could be nipping at it.
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Any advice/suggestions? Someone on r2r suggested dosing iodine, so I ordered some, but wanted to see if folks here had other ideas
 
Iodine seemed successful with @Rostato's brain coral. I'd recommend checking out that thread for his dosing ratios for iodine. Is it looking like this throughout the day, or is it somewhat more extended during the day?
 
max_nano said:
Iodine seemed successful with @Rostato's brain coral. I'd recommend checking out that thread for his dosing ratios for iodine. Is it looking like this throughout the day, or is it somewhat more extended during the day?
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That was a dip for my meat coral. Seems a bit better but not something I would recommend unless you know the coral is unhealthy.

Do you have any angels or butterflies in your tank?
 
Rostato said:
That was a dip for my meat coral. Seems a bit better but not something I would recommend unless you know the coral is unhealthy.

Do you have any angels or butterflies in your tank?
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The advice I got was to dose iodine, not dip. But yeah I don’t see much evidence that the coral is sick.
I don’t have any nipping fish, I only have a pink streaked wrasse
 
pbh-reef said:
The advice I got was to dose iodine, not dip. But yeah I don’t see much evidence that the coral is sick.
I don’t have any nipping fish, I only have a pink streaked wrasse
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Only dose if you know your levels. You can buy a salifert iodine fest kit, but I’d suggest an ICP test.
 
do you live close to another reefer? let him/her host your coral for a few day to see if the acan will react differently. another thing i would do is take the frag off that disc and mount it on a clean rock or clean piece of frag plug.see if that will improve.
 
the acan came with the tank, so the disk is cemented to the rock and has been with me for close to 2yrs and in that location for at least a year. I don't think I want to risk messing with it too much?
 
ok so I just retested stuff and everything came back the same, except phosphorus, which I tested twice (hanna ULR) and it came back 0. So could that be my issue? Will feeding more increase phosphorus?
 
yeah, they do. Do you think benereef could lower nitrates and phosphates (could it act as carbon dosing)? I don't think they were THAT low before...
 
Update: the acan is looking much much better, I started feeding the tank 3x a day, but I honestly think I may have accidentally damaged one polyp (the one to the right, below the main polyp) two weeks ago with a toothbrush scraping cyano/algae off the rock and that it took some time for the whole colony to react (by withdrawing). It seems to be well on the road to recovery.

I did do some more reading on benereef and saw this interview: https://reefs.com/2018/07/19/2018-reefapalooza-new-york-benepets-benereef/ It says: "Another aspect of Benereef is that it is also treating the water by supplying food to nitrifying bacteria already in the system, as well as bringing new colonies of bacteria that scavenge on ortophosphates. That results in an improved absorption capacity of the entire tank."

So I do wonder if dosing benereef dropped my phosphates down to 0. I will keep an eye on my parameters over the next few days/weeks.

Thanks so much everyone here for your advice!
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