What is growing next to my acan and what should I do?

dunno.. but your acan doesn't look very good either.. what kind of lighting you have on the tank?

105 watt pc. My acan always looked good and puffy until this thing came along. There have been mulitple new heads since I have added it to the tank, so I thought it was fine. And now this thing has come along.

Could be the flash washing out the polyps.

+1 Can you take a pic without the flash?

I will have to do that later. I am on my way out the door to go to work. I will post new pics tonight or in the morning of better shots without the flash.

Are you talking about the green stem? It could be some type of macroalgae.

looks to me like a clump of what people refer to as pineapple sponges. Just my opinion.

It looks like Dictyota algae to me...

Here http://www.mikesreef.com/images/critters/Hitchhiker14.jpg

i have hundreds of them but i like em

Sorry I have had so much going on that I haven't had time to post new pics. I did do a water change and ended up pulling it off of the rock. It seemed soft like a sponge, and the acan is starting to puff up like ot used to be.

I think I am finally figuring out how to shoot photos to post. Is this better?

Now it is really happy!!

Has it always been that color? It looks like it's pretty bleached to me.

If you are referring to the little heads on the bottom of the rock it looks like it could be more acan heads.

They look like new little acans, cool for you.

After I got rid of the mystery growth, the heads look like this. Now I am worried about them being bleached, what is the best plan for them being bleached?

Try feeding them. Also, what lighting are they under?

This:

u guys see it yet???

lol those things are harmless. i had a bunch of those before.

+1
I do see something that looks like a pineapple sponge but if you look closer you can see a yellowish/translucent branching macro. I had this but it was a light reddish/pink.

And I have to agree that the color is a bit pale. But you do have lots of little heads forming It's probably healthy just not giving you it's "true colors" for some reason. I would think the color of the light. But I'm not a light guru.....

Food makes a happy acan. Do you have any kind of feeding schedule?

If its sprouting off new heads, I can't say its unhappy, it just isn't under intense enough lighting for most of our counterparts taste. I'm glad you removed what ever was bothering the colony, it looks good, it just needs to tan for a while (metaphorically.)