Coral bleaching

Bitcoin Reefer · Jan 12, 2023

I’ve got 2 corals that have been getting worse and worse.
Long story short: Fighting Dinos, did H202 and microbacter7 for like 9 days with a gap in between. Lowered lights to only 10% blues and ramped them up to now 25% blues+all channels just over the last 4 days, but had them low for almost a month. I’ll post screenshot of schedule below. I also had low phosphates at first, and then overcorrexted to high phosphates weeks later.
Any thoughts on what is causing the bleaching in these two coral? Low light? High phosphates? H202? MB7?

I'll edit post with photos of the coral from my phone after I post this

Bitcoin Reefer · Jan 12, 2023

All other coral seem good. Even had some Zoas which multiplied from 5 heads to 14 in the two weeks I was gone on vacation (just got back yesterday)

Bitcoin Reefer · Jan 13, 2023

Bump

thatmanMIKEson · Jan 13, 2023

Looks like low nutrients and high light although your test results suggest different.

What about all your other parameters for those time periods? How old is this system? Have you only noticed this issue since using h202 and mb7? Did the h202 and mb7 give you the results you were after minus this issue?

keatonmjenkins · Jan 13, 2023

What’s bleaching them is not having consistent parameters. If they don’t level off you’ll probably have more.

DanyL · Jan 13, 2023

As a rule of thumb - you never want to make more than one change at a time to be able to follow and look for ill effects weeks after. It is recommended to wait 2 (preferably 3) to 4 weeks before introducing the next change.

Your current situation imo is the result of not giving the tank enough time to stabilize between treatments, you constantly change the chemistry of the water which corals do not appreciate.

Leave the tank alone and it'll get better, you can try to save what's left of this digitata and chalice by cutting off the live tissue and getting rid of the rest to prevent it from spreading along what's left.

Bitcoin Reefer · Jan 14, 2023

thatmanMIKEson said:
Looks like low nutrients and high light although your test results suggest different.

What about all your other parameters for those time periods? How old is this system? Have you only noticed this issue since using h202 and mb7? Did the h202 and mb7 give you the results you were after minus this issue?

Yes the issue started during the H202, MB7, and low light. 10% Blue channels, 0% whites/UV/etc.

It did get rid of the dinos, but then once I brought white channels of light back online more, the dinos have started to come back. They're not out of control, but they are there again a bit.

Bitcoin Reefer · Jan 14, 2023

DanyL said:
As a rule of thumb - you never want to make more than one change at a time to be able to follow and look for ill effects weeks after. It is recommended to wait 2 (preferably 3) to 4 weeks before introducing the next change.

Your current situation imo is the result of not giving the tank enough time to stabilize between treatments, you constantly change the chemistry of the water which corals do not appreciate.

Leave the tank alone and it'll get better, you can try to save what's left of this digitata and chalice by cutting off the live tissue and getting rid of the rest to prevent it from spreading along what's left.

Unfortunately dinos are hard to beat, and the treatment prescription I was given was H202 at night, MB7 during day, and lower lights to 10% blues, 0% all other channels. I think I may have left the lights low too long, almost a month.

DanyL · Jan 14, 2023

If it was due to low lights alone they would've lose their colors first and than take ages to die in this fashion, I've seen it many times with frags I temporary put in low light areas in my frag tank when I have no room left, they always bounce back though, and I'm talking near dark and for a long period, several months sometimes - both digittatas and chalices.

I think this was a combination of both low light and h2o2 unfortunately.

As for Dinos, while I never really had to deal with them in my 15 years in the hobby, other than maybe 2 weeks of them showing up and disappearing on their own after a tank transfer, I do know one affective method to combat it is to regularly dose pytho, is that something you've tried before?

Bitcoin Reefer · Feb 22, 2023

DanyL said:
If it was due to low lights alone they would've lose their colors first and than take ages to die in this fashion, I've seen it many times with frags I temporary put in low light areas in my frag tank when I have no room left, they always bounce back though, and I'm talking near dark and for a long period, several months sometimes - both digittatas and chalices.

I think this was a combination of both low light and h2o2 unfortunately.

As for Dinos, while I never really had to deal with them in my 15 years in the hobby, other than maybe 2 weeks of them showing up and disappearing on their own after a tank transfer, I do know one affective method to combat it is to regularly dose pytho, is that something you've tried before?

I think I’ve mostly beat the Dino’s by keeping phosphates up and dosing silica to promote Diatom growth to put compete the Dino’s. I don’t get it, but it’s worked lol. No Dino’s under scope, lots of diatoms. Now slowly dropping silica dose to let diatoms die off.

as for the two coral. They’re doing better after I did 3 large water changes of 33% each. I hadn’t done any water changes for few months. Was trying to keep nutrients under control with just chaeto in refugium, but apparently something was building up in water over the last few months.