Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Acan Coral Coral Trouble Card

The one page to have ready when a coral starts to slip. Corals almost never need a vet — recovery is a water-chemistry, light/flow, or pest fix. This walks you through the checks in order. Print it, keep it by the tank.

Black & white saves ink and prints cleanly on any printer.

Not sure it's serious yet? Run the symptom checker or the water-test checker first — many worries turn out to be a husbandry fix.

Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care · coralkin.com
Acan Coral — Coral Trouble Card

🔬 There's no vet for corals — diagnose the water & environment

Corals almost never need (or have) a vet. A struggling colony is a chemistry, lighting/flow, or pest problem you fix yourself. Work these Coralkin tools:

📇 Fill this in now

My system
What I'm seeing
Recent changes

🚨 Trouble signs now?

  • Fading or bleaching colour — almost always too much light; move it lower/shadier.
  • Receding flesh or exposed skeleton — too much flow, a chemistry swing, or feeding aggression from a neighbour.
  • Not opening / staying deflated — check flow (too strong?) and water stability.

🚗 First things to check

✅ Do

  • Test the full parameter set — salinity, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, phosphate and temperature — and compare to targets.
  • Check the lighting and flow at this coral's exact spot.
  • Look for pests and for irritation from aggressive neighbours.
  • Check for recent changes — new livestock, a dosing change, a big water change.

⛔ Don't

  • Don't reach for OTC “cures” or dose blindly.
  • Don't change everything at once — stability matters more than any single number.
  • Don't keep a badly-failing colony next to healthy ones without isolating it or fragging off the healthy tissue.

📋 This coral's targets

Colony / form
Fleshy polyps packed into a colourful colony; grows outward polyp by polyp and is easy to frag.
Lighting
LOW — around 25–50 PAR. Acans are very light-responsive: colour shifts noticeably with light, and too much bleaches them. Keep them shaded/low.
Water flow
Moderate, not too strong — their flesh is delicate and tears/recedes in harsh flow.
Placement
Lower rock or the sand in a shaded, moderate-flow spot — and give it SPACE: acans have sweeper tentacles and can take feeding aggression out on close neighbours.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
LPS build a stony skeleton — keep alkalinity (≈8–11 dKH), calcium (≈400–450 ppm) and magnesium (≈1300–1450 ppm) stable.
Feeding
Loves meaty foods — small pieces of mysis, krill and the like (small mouths, so keep pieces small). Feeding drives both growth and colour.
Growth & spread
Steady; adds polyps outward. Highly collectible and easy to frag once established.
Natural range
Indo-Pacific, including Australian waters.

🌸 A struggling coral is almost always telling you about its water, light, flow, or a pest — not an infection a vet can treat. Stabilise your parameters to target, confirm the light and flow suit this coral, and rule out pests and aggressive neighbours before changing anything drastic. Sudden swings are themselves a stressor.

❓ Work through

  • Is a parameter off-target?
  • Is the light or flow wrong for this coral?
  • Any pests, or aggressive neighbours?
  • What changed recently?