Consensus on reviving bleached coral

ahiggins · Sep 2, 2016

hey guys!
What's your experience in reviving a coral once it's bleached out (partially and/or entirely).
I ran into this with a bunch of new coral and I'm wondering if I can bring them back to life.
Corals that are bleached:leptoseris, leptastrea, cyphastrea, litho
Thanks !!

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 2, 2016

ahiggins said:
hey guys!
What's your experience in reviving a coral once it's bleached out (partially and/or entirely).
I ran into this with a bunch of new coral and I'm wondering if I can bring them back to life.
Corals that are bleached:leptoseris, leptastrea, cyphastrea, litho
Thanks !!

I was in your other par thread, is it sunburn or alk water acclimation, do you think.

low med flow low light. ( i buy a lot from the $5 frag rack to revive)

ahiggins · Sep 3, 2016

Oh hi! lol
Im 99% sure it was high alk low nutrient shock. I was running my lights at 50% intensity with all the new stuff on the sand and they were getting about 50-80 PAR. Right now because theyre bleaching, I have them in the shade and running 20% intensity so...probably 10-20 PAR.
My other corals that have been in there a while arent affected, just the new stock. Over the past few days Ive been feeding 2x as much and I did two water changes.

Current/Old parameters:
Nitrates: 5/0
Calcium: 420/480
Alk: 9.8/11.5

I have a few that are totally bleached, that may be dead but the majority are just spotty.
So youre saying they will come back?

Griff · Sep 3, 2016

Following along

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 4, 2016

Yes they can.
I like to shop the nearly dead racks. And I'm pretty good a killing corals.
Sorry this pic is so large but the yellow pink one on the left was a one inch stick 40days ago with a Dead spot running up the whole side. So I mounted it good side up and it did this.

It was also green.

ahiggins · Sep 6, 2016

Oh cool

I finally got the alk stable at 8.7-8.9. It looks like the bleaching has stopped so thats good. Now I just have to work on getting the color back.
Im hearing a lot about feeding will get the color back quicker-does that sound right to you?

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 6, 2016

There's no quick , but good food is good.

mcarroll · Sep 6, 2016

Light, nutrients and flow all play together.

What was the light like where these corals came from? A lighting change up or down can cause mortality.

There is no such thing as "high all shock" in healthy corals.

If you are dosing an organic carbon source, that appears to stress corals in some way so they can no longer tolerate higher alkalinity.

Alkalinity changes in general can be stressful though....stability has always been more important than an actual number. (With the exception of carbon dosing.)

ahiggins · Sep 6, 2016

They were grown under "ATI Aquablue Special (12K), ATI Blue Plus, and ATI Purple Plus" and they went into my tank with an AI prime (20K) 50% intensity but were put on the sand.
The system they were grown in was high nutrient low alk....coming into my low nutrient (zeros across the board) high alk tank.
I have had chemipure elite in the tank for months. Do you think that had something to do with it? They bleached within 2 days.
Everyone I have gotten information from (5 or so growers) believe it was the nutrients/alk issue.
I dont dose anything (unless you count the chemipure)

Right now Im running at 20% intensity slowly ramping back up to 50% (small changes per week).

And Ive been feeding my acans daily instead of 1x per week. to ramp up the nutrients.
I have some reef roids that I could use to target feed the small lithos and leptos but I wonder if it will help them... @saltyfilmfolks -- how long did you (feeding or not feeding) have to wait to see a change in the bleached out corals?

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 6, 2016

ahiggins said:
how long did you (feeding or not feeding) have to wait to see a change in the bleached out corals?

weeks sometimes.

ahiggins said:
I have had chemipure elite in the tank for months. Do you think that had something to do with it?

yes. its binding organics with a resin(poly filter) and phosphates (gfo)plus activated charcoal, so stripping nutrients from the WC, but i think it was either the difference in Alk or light, or perhaps both in your case. With the low alk from the original tank being low(yours high) and perhaps the light being brighter in your tank.

JFrar · Sep 6, 2016

I was proud of my self a year ago or so i bought a white bleached sunset montipora for $5, polyps were still visable. And i was able to revive it, it looked fully healthy about 3-4 months later. was a frag.