Is this Trachyphillia heathy?

[Mik236]

Hey I just got a bunch new corals on the 14th and one of the larger & more pricey pieces has me wondering if it’s in good heath. It’s a Trachyphyllia which would be my second one and that’s why it has me wondering. Since my first one seems to open up way more during the day to real get the light and at night it closes a bit and opens it’s feeding tentacles then close rite up once feed and the new coral really doesn’t seem to change much for day or night. Any help or suggestions on this would be much appreciated or is this just a different type of trachyphillia and all is fine?

the new one is more white colour and the heath older one is green

thanks

 

[andrewey]

What kind of light is the new one under? It looks a bit bleached to me- whether that's because it's in higher light then before or whether it's because it's stressed, it looks a little rough. That being said, I've had a few that looked like that and made full recoveries. I made sure the lighting/flow was good for them and slowly acclimated them to their final position over a month. Make sure they're not being disturbed during this time by any shrimp or other inverts that may want to nibble around/on them.

 

[Mik236]

I have them under a 72” Vertex Illumina 260. The light is about 13” above the water and the coral is 18” deep. Light is set to
40% white
77% royal blue
77% blue

Whites rise at 7:00am for 2 hour
Set at 8:00pm for 2 hour

royal blue & blue rise at 8:00am for 1 hour
Set at 9:00pm for 1 hour

 

[vetteguy53081]

fACTORS WILL BE LIGHTING, FLOW, LOCATION, SALINITY, ALK AND WATER TEMP
For me- moderate light and water flow (maybe reduce white even 5%), salinity 1.025-1.026, temp 78-79, ph range 8.1-8.3, and alk at 9.7.

 

[andrewey]

I'm not familiar with the par from that light, but a quick glance at the specs suggests it's pretty powerful for a LED. I noticed in your pictures a proliferation of green hair algae- I'm wondering if you're light is a bit too strong for the coral right now? To test the theory, you could do exactly what @vetteguy53081 suggested and lower your whites a bit. These corals are much more sensitive to high light then low light, so depending on the rest of the tank inhabitants, if this isn't feasible, you might try moving the coral a few inches further from the center of the light to reduce the par a bit. The healing time on these guys will be measured in weeks, not days. Make sure not to force feed them during this period, but you can feed "meaty" foods such as oyster eggs or cyclops at night if you see their feeder tentacles are out (don't feed if they don't have their feeder tentacles out).

 

[Mik236]

Yea I try that being the white light down 5%
But also this coral looks the same as in the store and this is day 2 now in my tank. But it just doesn’t seem to can’t much from day to night and barely any feed tentacles come out.
And with the hair algae I have been fighting it for a while now. I have started dosing NOPOX and it has been really being my phosphates down. They where up to around 1 ppm and now there down to .17 so still a bit to go but I think it’s working well. One other strange thing which now makes me think must be due to lighting. Is my other tank (120gal) seem to have way higher phosphate. Which was at 1.5ppm at the beginning of April and now I’ve got it down to .66 last test on May 7th and that tank really doesn’t have a hair algae problem

also my levels I have checked are
Salinity 32.7ppm (1.0246) currently
Temperature 77 currently
Alkalinity 7.56dkh May 15
Calcium 410ppm May 15
Phosphate 0.17ppm May 14
Nitrate 20ppm currently
Nitrite 0 ppm currently

here’s some pictures of the 120 and the 180

 

[miyags]

If its been in your tank only 2 days.It was bleached at your local fish store.Just give it some time.Its not your lights. try raising Alk to 9-10.And try to feed it a 1/4 in or smaller piece of raw shrimp,just to see if it will eat

 

[vetteguy53081]

Do you feed the coral? I feed mine 1-2X per week and it is fat under conditions I mentioned earlier

 

[andrewey]

Unfortunately with that amount of hair algae, your numbers probably aren't accurate. Hair algae takes in a ton of nitrate/phosphate, so the levels before the infestation might have been significantly higher.

If it looks the same, I would guess you bought a bleached coral from the LPS. I would reduce the light a bit and let it rest. I would not try and force feed it, as in my experience this kills more LPS then it saves. Give it time, it will take a few weeks or more for it to heal. Likely their lights were too strong at the LFS. Lowering your light a bit will allow it to acclimate and you can slowly ramp it back up over the next month. In addition to your parameters, you can search my history, but I wrote a thing about how to effectively remove hair algae. It's a very long process, measured in weeks/months.

 

[Mik236]

Unfortunately with that amount of hair algae, your numbers probably aren't accurate. Hair algae takes in a ton of nitrate/phosphate, so the levels before the infestation might have been significantly higher.

yea numbers I bet where way higher since I had a partial tank crash when I was away for a while. I ended up losing half my coral frags and 3 green chromis, 1 powder brown tang, and 1 clown trigger and a bunch of snails & shrimp. And all my other fish where looking really bad.
I ended up doing about a 100 gallon water change and now do about a 40 gallon change every 7-10 days. When it was super bad I never ended up testing it till later on.
mar the time was just a bigger emergency to get the water changed

 

[Mik236]

Do you feed the coral? I feed mine 1-2X per week and it is fat under conditions I mentioned earlier

Yea I feed the reef roids and some small frozen foods mysis or brine shrimp
I feed about ever 2 days, sometimes daily or up to weekly.

 

[Mik236]

Update on the trachyphillia tonight when light went off i seen the feeding tentacles Come out just so slightly so I feed it the ti year slide of raw scallops and after a while I’m quite sure it took it and it swelled up more then I’ve seen it ever and about a hour later took another look at it and it really had it tentacles out so I mixed up some reefroids and fed it again.

The photos just after feeding it the reefroids