Badly recessed acans- we'll see what happens. Advice?

[Tired]

So, I had a leak in my tank. A very, very slow one, that I didn't catch for awhile. Which meant, when I was adding fresh water to keep it full, I was replacing evap AND the leak, and my salinity slowly got lower. Lots of stuff got very pissed off. Most of it is recovering now that I've got everything in a non-leaking tank, but my acans are... "yeesh" is a good description. 

When I was putting everything in the new tank, I figured I'd give them an iodine dip, try and help with the stress and any potential opportunistic infections. I think I either made the dip too strong or left them in for too long, though, because when I took them out, they'd recessed even further.  Including one that had looked okayish up until then. This is... some amount of time after that. I don't know, time has lost all meaning. 

Here's what I'm working with. The one to the left has one gone polyp, one that looks potentially passable? The one at the bottom used to have two polyps, both in that terrible shrunk-down state, but one polyp came out last night. I assume it's a goner, but, hey, let's let it make an effort. 

The one to the right, I'm thinking might have a chance. A lot of the polyps on the back end are gone, or shapeless blobs, but I see a few that seem viable. Two aren't in the worst shape, three are misshapen and retracted but still have oral disks. Those five polyps all eat (reef roids) when fed. I'm hoping they have a chance, since the thing that made them this sick is (as far as I know) gone.

 

There were amphipods stealing their food, so I've put them in this little tupperware. It has a mesh-covered 'window' on it to allow for oxygen exchange while hopefully keeping the bristleworms and pods away. It's in the very corner of the tank, at the surface so pods can't crawl over the container, sheltered reasonably from the light. 

The tentacles on the least-bad one seem to be out all the time, even after I've fed it. Any idea what that means? 

 

So- what do I do from here? I assume daily is too often to feed, but what about every 2 days? Just a little bit of reef roids per polyp. The largest frag visibly eats, the second one might, and the goner doesn't seem to. 

What are the idea parameters for sickly acan lords? 

 

And, one important question: how do I differentiate between pink line disease and just a naturally pigmented skeleton? The one on the left has a pink skeleton, but I don't know if it's just like that. It was a dark orange flesh. 

If it is pink line disease, I'll pull and trash it so it can't spread, since I've been reading that no one's found a viable treatment. I really want to save the largest frag, it's a deep purple-brown with blue flecks/lines. 

 

Hopefully it's not a jinx to put this here, but here's what that big one used to look like. 

[jambon]

I would leave them be and let time heal them up. They are probably relieved now that your salinity is in order. 

  I have never heard of pink line disease but  if they were healthy before the leak issue they should come back.

[jservedio]

They are incredibly hardy corals and you can bounce back and entire colony from just a single speck of flesh. You just want stability moving forward and make sure your tank has some nutrients. I wouldn't feed them at all for at least a few weeks and after that feed them once a week, max, until they start to recover and are fully inflating (even in your original picture, they were not even close to fully inflated). After that you can feed them twice a week if your tank will stand for all of that food.

 

Once the tissue connecting the polyps is gone, they are essentially a bunch of single polyp frags and it's going to take a good long while to fully recover. They are going to be in recovery mode for probably a year or more. But, they can absolutely recover.

[Tired]

The thing is, I don't really have anything else in this tank that eats. I have one fish who eats the amphipods (who I haven't fed in 2 months), some anemones that I can really only feed once a week, and these guys. If I just scatter food in, loose, I'm going to feed my amphipod problem. Feeding the acans directly seems like the best way to get nutrients to them. Will it hurt them? The largest frag is definitely willing to eat, and I'd assumed that (and the constant extension of tentacles) means they should be fed. Or is there a way to put nutrients in here that won't be edible for my amphipods? I do have a couple zoa/paly frags that'll eat food, but I can't feed those often, either. Maybe alternate them and the anemones. 

 

That picture was when I'd just bought it and recently put it in, so it wasn't fully expanded yet. It got really nice and puffy later on, but I don't have a picture of that, I don't think. 

 

Is there a point at which it's safe to say that these are definitely not going to die, barring further environmental issues? Maybe when they start looking like acan polyps instead of smudges? 

 

[Tired]

Well, they're doing simultaneously better and worse than expected. I put them in a glass cup that's hung on the side of the tank, so they get indirect water flow, and are away from amphipods that can bug them. I put a tupperware lid on the screen lid over them to block most of the light, so they're in a soft shadow. I've been feeding a couple times a week, and the frags are all still responding slightly when fed.

 

The most pitiful one is actually not dead. I was expecting that second incredibly shrunken polyp to pop off at any point like its compatriot did, but not only has it not done that, it's still eating. I think it might have a chance. Trying not to get my hopes up on that one.

 

The one on the round frag plug is still lingering. It eats, poorly, and hasn't done much. No idea what to think on it, but the fact that it's still expanding a little seems like a good sign.

 

The largest frag is... mixed. A lot of the remaining polyps have come loose, and are only anchored by bits of flesh connecting them to each other. Two polyps are still embedded in place but shaped like nothing in particular, and don't seem to have tentacles. The loose polyps are a mixed bag, some of them just weird shapes, some of them still polyp-esque and eating. But I don't think this frag is going to die, because I have one single polyp that's not just surviving and staying in place, it's growing. It doesn't get all nice and puffy, but from what I've seen in pictures, tiny baby acan polyps don't do that anyway. It's definitely getting bigger, and it expands and retracts according to food and disturbances. I think I'm hopeful on this one.

[Clown79]

Acans repair fairly easily in my experience with them.

 

1 single piece of flesh left and I've seen them grow back.

 

The only thing I ever did was feed them weekly. I left them where they were unless it was a placement issue.

 

Fed reef roids weekly. 

They grew and repaired

[Tired]

Good to know, thanks. I have some fairly aggressive amphipods, so I think I might keep them in the cup for now. Also because I'm not sure how much flow they can tolerate at this point, they aren't in any state to tell me, and I'd hate to stress them further by putting them in too much flow.