cyano

Thanks to updating us about your tank and sharing your thoughts. SPS do like pristine water, and yours may be ideal for them. You probably need to buy some frags from some local hobbyists to see that they aren't quite as hard as you've believed. The key is dipping to avoid introducing pests. Water quality is already being well cared for, and you've got the temperature locked in too. Perfect timing if you ask me.

Feeding your acans once or twice a week and they will do well. The acans in my reef are doing very well, but the frags on the backside are merely holding their own with little growth. I need to make more of an effort to feed those and offer food from the backside of the reef a couple of times a week. That is probably going to help.

It's so weird how LEDs create a disco effect on the sand.

thanks for the input melev. what do you feed your acans? in the past when I have tried acans I tried to feed them small portions of fish food such as mysis at night but the cleaner shrimp i had back then was a grade "A" scavenger haha.

I have only started to believe that my water may be lacking something that sps like because after a week or two they always retract there polyps and no longer show them. Not longer after polyp retraction they start bleaching at the base and once bleaching and tissue loss begins they are dead within a few days. I have tried them in all levels of the tank, changing flow rates, changing lights, with and without biobellets, and changing salts after each failure all with the same end result. My tank is older and more stable temperature wise then it has been in the past so I will give it another try after i see how these latest corals do.

I have noticed though that since adding the chiller I have less evaporation now. It's amazing the difference that just 2-3 degrees makes

It could be your shrimp are destroying the coral to get to the food. Mini mysis and cyclop eeze are good foods for acans. But you have to defend the coral if the shrimp try to steal. I've observed a shrimp come up to a closed up coral, reach deep into the mouth of the coral and pull the food back out. It's very annoying. I have two peppermints in my 60g and they are destructive. If I were to move them to the 400g, my wrasses will eat them. What to do...

All new SPS should be placed on the sandbed for the first week or two. Then you can move them up about six inches for another couple of weeks. By then you'll be able to place them where you like. Don't give up, they are gorgeous corals.

Do you typically have to cut cubes into smaller portions?

right now the only shrimp i have in the tank is a coral banded which is very timid and not an aggressive eater in my tank right now so I imagine that will help increase my chances of successfully feeding them with no damage coming to the corals.

The part that frustrates me is that I had 4 that died in the sand bed, they had tissue loss and bleached and the longest any of those 4 survived was maybe 4 weeks. I really don't want to give up as being successful with those corals is my ultimate goal. Then again if I didn't want a challenge I would have done freshwater or just not gotten into the hobby at all.