Reef nutrition

BTAs Toxic to Acan?

MolaMola

Supporting Member
Sad. Put a beautiful new colony of striped acans into our 29g clownfish tank. It is full of BTAs plus some shrooms and a bit of cabbage leather. We recently added a couple tubs of fragged shrooms also. So, I thought it was fine for 4 days but maybe wasn't observing carefully, then saw two nems had moved and some shrooms were closed up. Acan was nearly dead and polluting the tank with stringy goo. : ( Removed acan, did water change and hoping things look good Monday. So do the BTAs exude some chemicals or expel nematocysts or something that killed the acan? Could have been unhealthy coral, too. I never considered there could be a problem, but that tank has a big volume of nems. Should no corals go in that tank?
 
BTAs will sting everything and anything in their path. If adding corals to a BTA tank, you’re accepting the risk of the nems moving around and stinging your new additions.
 
That’s too bad. The rbta that I had had fairly weak stingers. There were some corals that didn’t seem to be effected by it (I don’t recall which ones but remember posting about it years ago). The ones it did sting were pretty much goners though. I definitely remember an orange setosa that I had that went quick.
 
Did you keep the acans? the stringy stuff is its guts. I do find that acans are pretty weak when fighting other things in the tank. Sometimes they can regenerate like other LPS can.
 
So you think BTAs went over to the acan or reached tentacles to it? I saw no sign of contact, so thought it was something waterborne.
I got rid of the acan Friday. It stank SO BAD I didn't want to endanger another tank. Is sitting in freshwater so we can keep the skeleton.
Lesson learned.
 
I don’t know.. ymmv

This my acan next to a bta.

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@ashburn2k Looks good! I don't know what happened - I had a BTA for years in a tank with corals and there were no problems. I still wonder if it is because I have so many in a small tank. Or acan could have been unhealthy. Or other water quality issue. Vexing.
 
Already has carbon + phosgard. Maybe I should change it though.
Shrooms on rocks looking pretty squished up. Ammonia 0.25 and Nitrate 5.
One BTA was most upset - was on wall yesterday and on sandbed today. It is looking bubble-tippy, while all others have long, stringy tentacles.
 
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