Acropora polyps bubbling???

branbray07 · Dec 19, 2023

chcgregg said:
Please tell me you did nothing else

Every single acro this is happening to in my tank have also been heavily aquacultured. The ones which aren’t doing it are fine.

the quartz sleeve on my UV is constantly calcifying, so my flare up could correlate as to when the UV started to become less effective.

If the polyps are tuliping, it has to be because of an irritant in the water, as the highest surface area of the polyp is at the tips, so they’re “puckering” to reduce damage to the tip of the tentacle on the polyp. But what can cause that irritation?

Potentially an oxidative compound in the water? I’m not running carbon, potentially a bacteria? I’ve cleaned my UV

I’ll revisit this in a week or so and see if anything improves.

ABOSOLUTELY nothing else. This thing just got crazy after changing my t5 bulbs. I am by no means blaming it on this, however i started to notice the explosion on bubbles after i swapped out bulbs my bulbs. No other change was made. NOTHING. I have since stopped dosing of everything other thank kalk, and AFR , swapped out all rodi membranes, conducted 3 back to back massive 25 % water changes 3 days apart. NADA no changes. So i reached out to someone who knows a lot more than i do about SPS and suggested it could be my T5. So i went back in my pictures, and sure enough i started to see the first SPS bubble, 2 weeks after this change. NOTHING else was changed besides this so why not.

chcgregg · Dec 20, 2023

branbray07 said:
ABOSOLUTELY nothing else. This thing just got crazy after changing my t5 bulbs. I am by no means blaming it on this, however i started to notice the explosion on bubbles after i swapped out bulbs my bulbs. No other change was made. NOTHING. I have since stopped dosing of everything other thank kalk, and AFR , swapped out all rodi membranes, conducted 3 back to back massive 25 % water changes 3 days apart. NADA no changes. So i reached out to someone who knows a lot more than i do about SPS and suggested it could be my T5. So i went back in my pictures, and sure enough i started to see the first SPS bubble, 2 weeks after this change. NOTHING else was changed besides this so why not.

Very interesting. A couple questions for you:

What bulbs did you change and what combo do you run?
What fish food do you feed with and has that stayed consistent?

branbray07 · Dec 20, 2023

chcgregg said:
Very interesting. A couple questions for you:

What bulbs did you change and what combo do you run?
What fish food do you feed with and has that stayed consistent?

I went from 2 Blue + 2 Coral + to 2 Blue + 1 Coral + 1 True Actinic. Food is formula 2 pellets and rods. Never changed. Also reef nutrition oyster and phyto.

chcgregg · Dec 20, 2023

branbray07 said:
I went from 2 Blue + 2 Coral + to 2 Blue + 1 Coral + 1 True Actinic. Food is formula 2 pellets and rods. Never changed. Also reef nutrition oyster and phyto.

I hypothesise it’s the actinic/blue lighting with the use of processed foods. Massive blue spike causes an over production of O2 and potentially oxygen radicles causing cellular damage

Someone on instagram whom I spoke to mentioned that flake/pellets can cause this because of a protein present in the mix which could irritate Acropora. Potentially all the preservatives added as well. The person I spoke to only uses Fauna Marin pellets.

I was using flake, got bubbles/tulip polyps, started back on frozen only, phenotypes reduced in frequency and alk consumption increased, went back into pellets only, and it started occurring again. Although I did add an actinic T5 at the same time so I have to say that correlation doesn’t mean causation.

But possibility it could be something in the foods and the interaction of blue light. Perhaps a photo-degradation reaction producing toxic compounds.

branbray07 · Dec 20, 2023

chcgregg said:
I hypothesise it’s the actinic/blue lighting with the use of processed foods. Massive blue spike causes an over production of O2 and potentially oxygen radicles causing cellular damage

Someone on instagram whom I spoke to mentioned that flake/pellets can cause this because of a protein present in the mix which could irritate Acropora. Potentially all the preservatives added as well. The person I spoke to only uses Fauna Marin pellets.

I was using flake, got bubbles/tulip polyps, started back on frozen only, phenotypes reduced in frequency and alk consumption increased, went back into pellets only, and it started occurring again. Although I did add an actinic T5 at the same time so I have to say that correlation doesn’t mean causation.

But possibility it could be something in the foods and the interaction of blue light. Perhaps a photo-degradation reaction producing toxic compounds.

That is so weird about the food. I been using pellets for years, never had an issue. Same thing with the lighting, makes no sense however its the only change i made.