My Bowerbanki Acan had a slight mishap....

[ReefKeeper1699]

Last night around 3am I got up to get a drink. This is the time all of my lights are off including my actinics. Blackout time. I checked on my tank and noticed my acan had its feeds out completely and waving around. I grabbed a few pellets and dropped them in it and it grabbed them and pulled them in.

I woke up this morning to the entire center of him ripped out to the ribs. Mouth is gone. It's puffy outer edge is completely in tact and healthy and full of color. The only thing I can think of is one of my cuc's smelled the pellets in it and ripped its mouth off to access it.... I have blue leg hermits, green emerald crabs, a peppermint shrimp and a ton of snails.

My questions are, should I be concerned? How can I prevent this? Maybe only feed him at daylight when the scavengers aren't active? Can my acan make a full recovery with its mouth ripped off? It's one of my more pricey ones and I don't want to lose it....

I will respond to this with a picture of it.

 

[ReefKeeper1699]

This is a pic of what I am talking about

 

[new2saltyfish]

how long have you had it in your system?!? I had one do the same thing to me a few days ago. Not sure what it was cause all my levels are stable

 

[ReefKeeper1699]

Few weeks. My parameters are perfect. I am almost certain it was something that tore it open. Only thing I did different was feed it during black out and I fed it new life spectrum marine pellets for the first time. Before this it always ate mysis shrimp. Unless it's a strange reaction from the pellets?

 

[Marshall O]

If I had to guess, I would lean towards the Peppermint...they are nocturnal and have been known to not always be "reef safe". Just a hunch though. Something to keep your eye on. Same goes with the green emeralds as well.

 

[CoralJunkie]

If I had to guess, I would lean towards the Peppermint...they are nocturnal and have been known to not always be "reef safe". Just a hunch though. Something to keep your eye on. Same goes with the green emeralds as well.

+1, I will never keep any type of crabs or shrimps in a reef tank ever again lol i had an emerald crab start going to town on a hammer coral and a cleaner shrimp rip apart numerous lps corals mouths just to steal food, it resulted in me coning the corals off while i fed them until i could catch them and give them away

 

[RichardinMA]

I've had similar, though thankfully not as severe, problems when feeding pellets to my LPS at night. I have no large crustaceans in my tank but my little blue legs and one scarlet leg went to town trying to pull some pellets out of a Diploastrea I had just fed. I had to keep knocking them off and toss some pellets they could get to in there to stop the attack. Oddly, I have not had the same problem when feeding frozen foods, i.e. mysis, krill, etc... Perhaps the pellets are such a concentrated source of smell that it drives them crazy. Feeding during the day is also a problem as my Melanurus wrasse prefers to pick food off of and out of corals than to eat what is in the water column.

 

[ReefKeeper1699]

Yea, personally I am going to stick with day time feeding and using the frozen food. I will keep a good eye on the emeralds and shrimp and see who has the most crazy crave for meat and yank it out.

The acan still looks very healthy and nice and puffy and that torn spot is a but smaller. I feel it should recover. I will update with pics soon.

 

[ReefKeeper1699]

Here is an update look at him. Look at the healing process accomplished in a few days . In so happy!