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pimpinitup6969
08/28/2009, 01:26 AM
What causes acans to bleach? i have had a couple colonies for about a year now and they all of the sudden lost most of their color... Params are all great
Johnny C
08/30/2009, 12:00 AM
Describe your parameters & lighting... have you moved 'em?
pimpinitup6969
08/30/2009, 09:28 AM
Nitrates 5, Phosphates 0, Calc 420, Alk 3.1, ph 8.2
They have been on the sandbed under my 175 watt halides for as long as i have owned them. They have always looked and grown great until about a month ago...
sedor
08/30/2009, 09:36 AM
Could it be some sort of pest? Shine a flash light on them at night. I had some zoas that totally stopped opening and I couldn't figure out what it was until I looked at night and saw some snails crawling around in them. Got them out of there and all of a sudden the zoas are open and thriving again.
rtparty
08/30/2009, 08:32 PM
Do you feed them anything? If so, what, how much and how often?

In a recent Coral magazine they state that acans MUST be fed meaty foods to thrive over an extended period of time. All of my acans started to bleach at one point. I raised my Magnesium and started feeding a couple times a week. Colors are coming back and thy look better than ever.

HTH
pimpinitup6969
08/30/2009, 08:55 PM
that might be it i used to feed them mysis once or twice a week.... never thought about it
cardiffgiant
08/30/2009, 11:05 PM
How is your Mg? When mine started going down hill I found that my Mg had dropped pretty quickly.
amore169
08/31/2009, 02:21 AM
Mg will do that, it happen to me my Mg drop to 1050 and some of my LPS started losing color.
swampy42
08/31/2009, 11:02 AM
What is your temp? Has it been stable? Acans are sensitive temp.
pimpinitup6969
08/31/2009, 04:24 PM
Temp is always 79 i check it daily. Mag is good....
plankton
09/05/2009, 08:37 PM
Yeah, check for a pest like bristle worm or something that is stressing the colony out. You might want to consider raising it a little higher off the sand just in case. Your water parms look fine.

Scott
whowadat
09/08/2009, 12:42 AM
Alk 3.1 ???

That doesn't sound good.....
plankton
09/08/2009, 11:06 AM
I assumed 3.1 'meq/L' which would be within range, but if the alk reading was in 'dKH' then yeah the tank would have already had a pH crash.

pimpinitup6969 - can you confirm the measurements units from your Alk test kit? Thanks.

Scott