Dragon eye Favia whitening around edges

[Gator2019]

I have had this dragon eye Favia for about 2 months now and as of a week ago, it has started to get lighter and lighter around the edges. I am out of the house until 4ish everyday, and the lights for the tank don’t come on until after I leave. Because of that, I can’t tell if it lightens up because the light is burning it or something. I don’t have the brightest of lights (current USA orbit), plus it’s in the sandbed, so I don’t know if that is possible. Any advice is welcome. I will do a test right now and post a picture and the results.
Salinity:.023 (raising it right now)
Gh:120
Kh:120
Ph:7.7
Nitrites and nitrates didn’t even register

 

[mtraylor]

Check your Alk.

 

[joeyhatch11]

Quite possible that your water is too clean. Do you have the option to target feed? How old/new is the tank? What's you calcium and magnesium look like? Any other corals showing bad signs?

 

[Gator2019]

I have yet to do a water change on the tank in the 2 months I have had it running. My local reef club wanted to try a nice size fuge to see if it could keep the nutrient levels normal. I didn’t want to have this type of coral yet since the tank is so new. That being said all of my other corals are fully extended and eatting, except for my monti (another coral I didn’t want this early on and was placed too close to the light and started to get white on it). I could target feed it, and I have tried, but it doesn’t extend its tenticals very often and the food floats away. Also, when I set up the tank, I wasn’t going to do corals, so I didn’t use reefing salt.But now that I have them, I have slowly been adding reefing salt. Because of that, my alk, mag, and calcium could be too low.

 

[mrtian97]

You don’t need reef salt to keep corals, I use regular instant ocean and have heavy loads of corals

 

[Gator2019]

Oh okay. That’s what I am currently using. I was going to switch to Reef crystals or fritz.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

A simple thing to try as well. Raise it up off the sand. On a smaller rock or attach to your scape.
My thinking, better flow, less exposure to whatever it is on the sand bed that's blooming.

 

[Gator2019]

A simple thing to try as well. Raise it up off the sand. On a smaller rock or attach to your scape.
My thinking, better flow, less exposure to whatever it is on the sand bed that's blooming.

Okay. I will have to try that. I’m having this diatom bloom, so maybe it’s getting to it. I will try going to more flow.