Coral Placement - Acans

[jtmoney528]

I have 3 G5's over this tank, can someone help me on where to place acans?

 

[santeeeyyy]

I always tend to put them on the bottom or near the bottom. I have mine on the sandbed

 

[VintageReefer]

Acans should be put on the sandbed in low light otherwise they tend to morph and turn all red. I had some beautiful and expensive rainbow acans from aquasd that had reds and yellows, orange all mixed in. I placed them high (several years ago before I learned) and they lost all the coloration and became solid red. Once the color is lost I don’t think it ever comes back. So yea…place them low and in the sand. I keep mine around 100 par and they look great and have not only retained color, they are developing additional colors and some are even getting traces of green developing

Hard to see but on the last pic if you zoom in that left polyp is developing green streaks

 

[steveschuerger]

Mine are in the lower half of the rocks. As far as color , I’ve found that it depends on the dominant one, at least when colors than red are thee. I put some green/purple ones fairly high and they became almost completely green. Tank is 24 inches tall and the highest ones are at about 19-20” down from the top.

 

[VintageReefer]

Yes. Too much light and the dominant color takes over. I hear they can be acclimated slowly to higher light but I’m not risking it. Mine are doing great nice and low lol

 

[Narideth]

I have acans under all sorts of different PAR readings. I have them at the 100-150 range, 180 and 260, but these are all different blue and white leaning lights. I have an acan bridge with 7 different colored colonies sitting under blue-dominant lights at around 150 PAR. These guys have only been under those lights for about a week, but they've been sitting under 200+ PAR for a month before then with no color shift. I'm excited to see which they prefer or react to.

A different rainbow acan under 250 lost some of its color on the main head, but the babies coming in seem to be used to the range, while the one sitting next to it retained its colors. There's so many variables, these wild and crazy acans. Easily my favorite coral.