What do you feed your Acans?

[Texas Rick]

I have a pair of colorful Acans. I’m just trying to get a general idea of what you guys feed your Acans. I have some small pellets of LPS power. It seems like they like it. I noticed they puff up and deflate and puff up and deflate. I caught one with its tentacles out last night. But it seems like they only do it at night.

 

[Perthegallon]

I honestly don’t feed my corals and I use to be a big feeder it just adds to much waste to my tank and has little benefits

 

[tnw50cal]

I feed mine meaty foods-pieces of shrimp,scallop,etc. I get them from my frozen LRS nano reef food. sometimes I can't believe what size piece some polyps can swallow, but they do. I feed them at least twice a week(Tuesday and Friday).They usually poop the next day after I feed them. i have one that almost always has it's feeding tentacles out. All of them deflate and puff up at least once a day. Mine all about double in number of polyps every 4-5 months. Some of my favorite corals.
I combat any waste problems by having barebottom tanks and at least twice a week(Wednesday and Saturday) sucking out as much detritus and then blowing off/under/over all the rocks and let the filter(sock)filter out the water born detritus as well as sucking out what then settles in the slow current spots. Then I change to a clean sock. Notice I clean the day after I feed. I do a 10% water change every Friday night when I get home at midnight.

 

[Jjd531]

^^ agree with that. I also just drop 'shrimp' pellets on them and they seem to suck them right up. When I feed which I've been severely lacking on, I turn pumps off and target feed, I take a blunt tip syringe and mix reef roids, mysis, and a plethora of other frozen or fine powdered foods to make a sort of mush which seems to not fly all over versus just really fine reef roids. Plus it adds a lot of variation to their diet which imo is great.

 

[Texas Rick]

I feed mine meaty foods-pieces of shrimp,scallop,etc. I get them from my frozen LRS nano reef food. sometimes I can't believe what size piece some polyps can swallow, but they do. I feed them at least twice a week(Tuesday and Friday).They usually poop the next day after I feed them. i have one that almost always has it's feeding tentacles out. All of them deflate and puff up at least once a day. Mine all about double in number of polyps every 4-5 months. Some of my favorite corals.
I combat any waste problems by having barebottom tanks and at least twice a week(Wednesday and Saturday) sucking out as much detritus and then blowing off/under/over all the rocks and let the filter(sock)filter out the water born detritus as well as sucking out what then settles in the slow current spots. Then I change to a clean sock. Notice I clean the day after I feed. I do a 10% water change every Friday night when I get home at midnight.

Yes. I do a 10% water change every weekend. Sometimes but only sometimes do I do a other weekend water change

 

[AcroNem]

I honestly don’t feed my corals and I use to be a big feeder it just adds to much waste to my tank and has little benefits

I disagree. Corals will almost always benefit from feeding, they're basically one big mouth they have them for a reason corals feed aggressively in the wild.

To the OP, most anything will work for those Micromussa. Pellets, mysis, pacific krill (not the big ones) enriched brine, arctic copepods, they won't be picky.

 

[Texas Rick]

I disagree. Corals will almost always benefit from feeding, they're basically one big mouth they have them for a reason corals feed aggressively in the wild.

To the OP, most anything will work for those Micromussa. Pellets, mysis, pacific krill (not the big ones) enriched brine, arctic copepods, they won't be picky.

I’d rather have a happy Acan than a starving and deflated one. What is OP?

 

[tnw50cal]

Original poster.

 

[Mike N]

I definitely get faster growth and better PE when spot feeding acans fairly regularly.
I just give them what my fish eat.

 

[piranhaman00]

I honestly don’t feed my corals and I use to be a big feeder it just adds to much waste to my tank and has little benefits

How would feeding an animal have little benefit? They grow much faster for sure! I feed mine mysis shrimp.

 

[Texas Rick]

I definitely get faster growth and better PE when spot feeding acans fairly regularly.
I just give them what my fish eat.

How do you get the stingers to come out? These are beautiful!

 

[sabor]

I don’t spot feed. Throw in some reef roids and reef chili and turn off my pumps. They do just fine.

I grew most of these about half a year ago from 1-3 heads

 

[sabor]

How do you get the stingers to come out? These are beautiful!

Spot feed them. If they feel comfortable with what your putting out on the syringe than their stingers will come out. Their stingers usually come out after lights are out to feed, but you can manually get them to come out.

 

[Texas Rick]

Spot feed them. If they feel comfortable with what your putting out on the syringe than their stingers will come out. Their stingers usually come out after lights are out to feed, but you can manually get them to come out.

I don’t think they like the artic-pods I’m feeding them. They don’t open up at all. I think they like the pellets. They puff up when I feed them the pellets. The blasto that I have also seems like they like the pellets. The blasto also closes up when I feed the pellets. With the pods, they just spit it back out.
I would like to try the chili. where do you get that?
Also, how do you manually make the stingers come out?

 

[GaryE]

I feed mine reef-roids 2 - 3 times a week and will drop a bit of whatever I am feeding my nems now and then. Nems usually get a cube of frozen mysis or something similar sometimes with a chopped up silverside. (the nem won't eat one whole)..

 

[sabor]

I don’t think they like the artic-pods I’m feeding them. They don’t open up at all. I think they like the pellets. They puff up when I feed them the pellets. The blasto that I have also seems like they like the pellets. The blasto also closes up when I feed the pellets. With the pods, they just spit it back out.
I would like to try the chili. where do you get that?
Also, how do you manually make the stingers come out?

You can get both products at bulkreefsupply. Saltwateraquarium sells the reef roids in a bigger container. Put the spot feeder near their mouths and slowly spray some food out. Once they sense the food in the water column, their stingers will start to come out and try to grab the food.

 

[Fernthereefer]

I feed mine frozen mysis and brine shrimp, at the same type as the fish.

Reef roids once a week, don't know if it helps though.

 

[Texas Rick]

How fast do they grow? If conditions are right. Will mine grow any larger? Or more heads?

 

[Fernthereefer]

I recommend reading reefer's experience here:

Acan growth?

So we have a few acans, most started with 2 or 3 heads and a lot of them have grown many new heads and others have the same amount of heads as when we got them. All of them open and are feed at the same times and frequency. All of them look happy, so what give?

www.reef2reef.com

I think in general they are slow grower, but bigger colonies "seem" to expand faster just because its an exponential growth.

 

[Mike N]

How do you get the stingers to come out? These are beautiful!

Just by spot feeding them mysis several times per week. Not sure if they are consuming the rotifers I'm adding.