Help! Coraline bleached, LPS closed, sps bleaching

[Leptomaniac]

4 days ago i woke up to a white tank, all my coralibe bleached evenly everywhere on glass, rocks, etc in the display... but is still bright pink in the fuge.

Next day my torch, zoas, and blastos closed up 99% and my sps had zero polyp extension.

Two days ago first sps frag bleached out.

Today realized my skimmer hasnt been working corrctly. Probably needs to be cleaned but its not pulling enough air for some reason.

Tank params:
Nitrate : 1-5
Phosphate : undetectable
Alk : 7.8
Calc : 350
Mag : 1200
PH : not tested in 10 yrs

Could this be a PH issue??? I’m at a loss.
Did a 50% water change two days ago to no avail.

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

Well, I suppose a good way to start would be to figure out what all the differences between your DT and your refugium are so we can look into some possible causes..
Raise the lights at all recently? Your Ca is pretty low but I wouldn’t suspect that to be the cause of this.
Another shot in the dark; add any chemical(s) directly into the DT the day before you first noticed?

 

[Leptomaniac]

Ya i didnt want to go crazy with details but i guess i need to.

To clarify, some parts of the sump have bleached coraline too, but there are still many spots of healthy pink.

In the past month, had to start dosing alk,calc between weekly 25% water changes (only a 20 gal system). Tank started doing great since adding a reefbrite LED strip a month ago, growth took off, hence dosing.
All dosing was done to the intake side of the fuge, and turnover is about 15x per hour.

Params are identical between display and fuge chemically. I have a cfl algae scrubber with carbon/gfo reactor and skimmer.

I can’t imagine this is lighting related because it happened so suddenly, but DT lights are 3 kessil a80’s, single t5, and single blue reefbrite non xho.

Only thing now that i’m thinking back that has changed is about a month ago i started getting some minor red slime algae. Literally just a light amount on the glass and it has not really been spreading to rocks.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Sudden bleaching can be linked to:

Alkalinity swing
Change in light intensity/duration
PH swing, higher or lower than NSW
Salinity change, lower.
Bacterial/algae bloom

Dosing error/ATO malfunction?

 

[Leptomaniac]

No dosing error as far as i have seen, all params stayed constent through dosing because i specifically didnt want to raise too fast. Dosing was like 2ml daily of alk, 1 mag, and 4 calc.

I dont mean to start a wild goose chase so here is what i have taken note to:

No alk swing, salinity change, or phosphate/nitrate change.

Added reefbrite strip month ago and started dosing to keep params stable.

Month later started to get little bit of slime algae, then coraline bleaches overnight, then LPS react first (i thought very strange), then sps lose all polyp extension but not color (yet) and one new small sps frag bleached.

Please let me know if anyone is seeing something jumping out here that i’m missing.

I’ll be doing another 50% water change tomorrow, and I’ll be checking all normal params and getting PH test kit.

Really do appreciate any input.

Thanks

 

[Leptomaniac]

@Best Fish-Jake, sorry no chemicals added just prior to all this happening. I mean my 1 yr old will dump a hand in there every now and then if i let him feed some pellets but thats about it and not really new.

 

[Flippers4pups]

No dosing error as far as i have seen, all params stayed constent through dosing because i specifically didnt want to raise too fast. Dosing was like 2ml daily of alk, 1 mag, and 4 calc.

I dont mean to start a wild goose chase so here is what i have taken note to:

No alk swing, salinity change, or phosphate/nitrate change.

Added reefbrite strip month ago and started dosing to keep params stable.

Month later started to get little bit of slime algae, then coraline bleaches overnight, then LPS react first (i thought very strange), then sps lose all polyp extension but not color (yet) and one new small sps frag bleached.

Please let me know if anyone is seeing something jumping out here that i’m missing.

I’ll be doing another 50% water change tomorrow, and I’ll be checking all normal params and getting PH test kit.

Really do appreciate any input.

Thanks

All I got is pH is low, pH may have dipped under 7ph with lights off.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Weird.
IMO , you should probably drop the gfo, for nutrients but...

And the reefbright is probably the most intense Light your using

The corraline bleaching under high light is not unusual, but if it’s happened that far after adding the light .....

Does sound kinda like a toxin or something.

 

[Leptomaniac]

All I got is pH is low, pH may have dipped under 7ph with lights off.

Ya i’ll start monitoring tomorrow and let u know what i get.

Thanks

 

[DSC reef]

This is a strange dilemma. PH or toxin is plausible. Curious to what you find with the PH testing.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Ya i’ll start monitoring tomorrow and let u know what i get.

Thanks

Okay, good to find out what it says.

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

@Best Fish-Jake, sorry no chemicals added just prior to all this happening. I mean my 1 yr old will dump a hand in there every now and then if i let him feed some pellets but thats about it and not really new.

Wash his hands right before putting them hands in the tank?

 

[Flippers4pups]

Taken from Randy's "pH vs alkalinity" article:

Finally, pCO2 fluctuates within a reef tank every day because of the activities of the organisms present. Some are producing CO2 as a waste product of metabolism, including all organisms in the dark. Those that photosynthesize consume CO2 during the day. As a consequence, the pCO2 rises during the night and declines during the day. This change in pCO2 is largely responsible for the pH fluctuation over the course of a day.

Winter time, houses closed up and Co2 rises. This is why I think it could be PH also with alkalinity at 7.8 dkh, closed/tight house with more than usual Co2 concentration in the ambient room air, could pull the alkalinity down and pH with it when your lights go off at night.

 

[greg1786]

Any chance you or your wife were cleaning in the same room and got windex or some other type of aerosols in the air? Happened to my brother years ago, his gf at the time was cleaning the Windows and decided to windex the tank glass. The following morning he had a very similar situation to what your having. I think your cal, alk, and mag are all a little low, is this your normal params?its possible if your all dropped very suddenly this could happen, any tissue necrosis on sps? When everything bleaches that quickly its usually due to something DRASTICALLY changing or happening to the tank, theres gotta be something we are missing.

 

[dankreef]

Zero p04 + new LED Very very likely. Same timing and the corals bleaching out sounds about right .

 

[Flippers4pups]

Possible contaminates, yes absolutely.
Possible "riding the razors edge" pH wise, plausible. Rule out what you can first and go from there.

 

[tigé21v]

Stray voltage? Maybe a rusty magnet?

 

[Leptomaniac]

Thanks for all the replies, i’ll start ruling these out one by one. Definitely not stray voltage or rust.

I agree its probably low PH with higher CO2 in winter. Also makes sense if my skimmer crapped out and had even less dissolved O2 for a day or two, but i’ll find out tomorrow. Just wasnt sure if PH would make everything bleach instantly like it did.

And yes my big 3 params are lower than normal, but i was planning to bring them back up slowly. Normally at alk 8.5 calc 350 mag 1250... small tank so i try to keep a little low to keep growth in check.

I would think light too but it was fine for weeks, actually getting more color and growth... unless growth increased PO4 and NO3 uptake and with the excess light caused params to shift. I’ll try to rule out PH first and move on to this next.

 

[Leptomaniac]

Any chance you or your wife were cleaning in the same room and got windex or some other type of aerosols in the air? Happened to my brother years ago, his gf at the time was cleaning the Windows and decided to windex the tank glass. The following morning he had a very similar situation to what your having. I think your cal, alk, and mag are all a little low, is this your normal params?its possible if your all dropped very suddenly this could happen, any tissue necrosis on sps? When everything bleaches that quickly its usually due to something DRASTICALLY changing or happening to the tank, theres gotta be something we are missing.

I’d think that too but my wife knows to not to use any cleaners on the tank ever. I did do that water change in case it was something dumb like cleaner but that didnt seem to help at all.

 

[dankreef]

If your tank is rocking it will suck down p and n. Will also take a little bit of time to show paling from slow starvation. PH would have always been a problem if that's what it is . In my experience PH has never been a contributor to paling . Paling is from low neutrients and high light . Doing 25% water changes a week plus adding gfo will 100% strip your water for sure . The Lps will go from that for sure and sps. If you had alk problems it would be burning tips or losing base . Nothing is certain but I'd say it's very likely your problem . Wouldn't hurt to run a poly filter just incase there's something else. Good luck . More light = corals need more sunscreen = po4 .