Who Gives A Fish Forums

I've got a 125 gallon mixed reef with a mix of sps, lps and softies. Most everything's doing great, but I've got a couple of problem children - Acan Lords and Zoas.

I've got the Lords placed low with moderate to low flow. Nearby, my echinatas are thriving, but not too close. Still, the Lords just won't open up fully. Their feeders are out at night, and I'm stumped.

Are they just naturally finicky? I keep my SG at 1.024, and nitrates and nitrites are low, but I don't really track much else. I've never seen any fish or inverts bothering them.

Other lps that do well in the system are lobos, hammer, torch, frogspawn, bubble, and war coral. On the other hand, I've had issues with elegance and dragon soul favia.

What am I missing?

Not sure I can give a definitive answer, but I've got some follow-up questions that might help. When you say your LPS are thriving, how long have you had them, and how old is your setup? I've struggled with Zoas in the past, and despite monitoring everything, it didn't seem to make a difference. However, once my system matured, the Zoas started doing great - they've formed huge colonies over the years. So, I'm wondering if the definition of "thriving" might be a bit subjective here.

As for your Acan Lords and Zoas, have you tried placing them in different spots? What kind of lighting do you have in your tank? What was the lighting like where the corals came from, and did you acclimate them to your lighting? These details might give us a better idea of what's going on.

Thanks for the response, lumenox. My tank's been up and running for about 3.5 years, so I'd say it's fairly mature. I've tried different placements for the Acan Lords and Zoas, mostly keeping them low in the tank with my SPS on the BoldVoys. I've also made sure to keep them in low flow zones, as I know they prefer that.

My lighting setup is LED, with blues at 60% and whites at 40% during peak hours. When I first introduce them to the tank, I usually start them off in a partially shaded area and then gradually move them out to unshaded over time.

I've also moved on from keeping lords, seems I'm not the best at keeping LPS with big mouths, like meats and lobos. My echinatas are doing great, recently added an acan micromussa colony, 2 months in and so far so good, we'll see how it goes.