Acan Loosing Flesh

I have a gorgeous acan colony that has been losing flesh for the last few days. It looks as though there is something eating the flesh itself. The other day I had notice that part of its flesh was white and I figured the sps it fell on to stung it. I got home from work and saw that half of it was basically bone, but some flesh was still within the grooves of the skeleton. Could the SPS sting have done that much damage to it? Is there any chance of saving the rest of it?

Fish Livestock:

3 Chromis
1 blue hippo tang
1 yellow tang
1 purple firefish
1 royal gramma
1 flame angel (hasn't touched a thing. Not even my clams.)

Inverts that move:

3 emerald crabs (one is HUGE)
2 peppermint shrimp (the likely culprit)
1 pistol shrimp (unleashed to kill the peppermints )
random reef safe snails and hermits

 

It is a possibility the SPS sting did that but I would think that the Acan would have done the damage to the SPS. The peppermints would most likely go after dead flesh. And quite possibly may have done all of the damage.

 

The flesh started disappearing from the initial spot where the two touched. It was white before the flesh started coming off. Could this be a disease? Should I cut my losses before it spreads to my other acans?

 

I used a knife and hammer and fragged the dead heads off the healthy ones.

 

I think that was the best choice, you definitly do not want any nasty bacterial infections spreading. If it was a smaller coloney I would have said cut your looses but since you said it was a nice large colony, that is a tough call.

 

I was going to cut my losses, but figured since half of it is gone, it couldn't hurt to frag the dead heads off. I went about one head in from where the dead flesh met the live heads. I hope it works.

 

Great plan, hope it works.

 

I've found acans to be very hardy. I've dropped mine several times, fragged it and had a sps frag fall into it. It does sound like the initial sting damages the coral and then caused some of the polyps to die. However, the angel, despite what you've seen, may have started to pick at it and the shrimp may have started to eat any remains. It's probably good that you fragged it. Hope it recovers. Do you have any pics?

 

No pics. My POS camera takes awful macro shots. The best way I can describe it is there was some colored flesh within the ridges of the skeleton. Only a small amount. The initial sting area turned white and that is where the flesh started coming off of. It moved to the right of it the sting area and not to the left. I hope when my lights come on I don't see more skeleton. All my other acans are doing well. I don't think it is the angel, wouldn't it eat some of all of my acans and other lps? Not just the one that happened to get stung.

 

Your acan colonies are very nice from your pics. This sucks.

probably a smart move. Got to save them.

I would bet the peppermints are just cleaning it after the fact...

"unleashed" cracked me up. praeparet bellum

I bet this is from the SPS. But better safe w/the fragging.

Wanted to say I have a plachy (maybe it's a trachy, I can't ever remember) that withered to barely having some color between a few of the bone ridges. Was that way for months. Then one day I got up and it was MASSIVE overnight and has been fine ever since... IME, color in the ridges isn't a goner necessarily...