Help my montipora!

theasherrr · Feb 9, 2023

This is a seasons greetings montipora that I think is dying. I’ve moved positions twice. Once it was in direct light and then it was towards bottom mid of tank with indirect light. Unfortunately I don’t have a par meter to measure light.
Is there anything I can do for it to get its color back or is it a lost cause?

bushdoc · Feb 9, 2023

My wife says that I am usually wrong, but this one looks rather inanimate.
Even then, it did happen to me ( quite recently) that my bleached Monti recovered, so wait a bit.
Mind that there might be other causes as too much light. What about water params?

theasherrr · Feb 9, 2023

All water tests came back within range and have been stable since it cycled. My BTA just split into two and has recovered and looks great. Nothing else is looks like it’s stressed or dying, only this. It happened basically the next day after being brought home which was about three weeks ago.

how long would you wait?

bushdoc · Feb 9, 2023

theasherrr said:
All water tests came back within range and have been stable since it cycled. My BTA just split into two and has recovered and looks great. Nothing else is looks like it’s stressed or dying, only this. It happened basically the next day after being brought home which was about three weeks ago.

how long would you wait?

If it was bleached by strong light, then I would wait another week or two, otherwise toss it away if you see algae growth all over it.

i cant think · Feb 10, 2023

theasherrr said:
This is a seasons greetings montipora that I think is dying. I’ve moved positions twice. Once it was in direct light and then it was towards bottom mid of tank with indirect light. Unfortunately I don’t have a par meter to measure light.
Is there anything I can do for it to get its color back or is it a lost cause?

If it’s bleached but you can see polyps on it still, don’t lose hope. I’ve had monti and other SPS bounce back from what looked like a white coral with just a couple polyps.
I’m also attempting to get a Tenuis to grow back from simply 1 polyp and so far he’s up to 2 polyps so hope is there is even just a bit of the coral seems alive whether thats 1 singular polyp with just a bit of zooxanthellae in the skeleton or a group of polyps with almost no zooxanthellae left.

TheBear78 · Feb 10, 2023

As above. My sole piece of SPS is a small Montipora frag. I had two but one died and the other lost almost all of its colour. I kept it on the off chance and over several weeks it is now back to about 90% of its former glory.