LPS Bleaching slowly

planecrazy · May 20, 2009

Ok, I have a 60 cube. Temp is 77-79, salinity is 1.026, alk 7, ca380, mg 1400. I dose about 50ml of BRS alk and CA every one to 2 days. My alk swings from 6 to 8. If I don't dose for a day or two it falls and I slowly bring it up, no more than 1 dhk / day. I have a blue and pink oxyopora and is now cream colored an orange/red acan a mahattan project acan and another purple / green acan that have all slowly lost color over the last month. I also have a green / red acan that is fine. I have relocated the oxy and purple green acan to near the bottom of the tank. The mahattan is also at the bottom. It's driving me nuts. Lighting is a single 250 HQI halide in a standard spider pendant. It's about 10" off the water so that makes it 34" to the corals. PAR at this depth is about 125-150. I also dose iodine (aquavitro, 1ml 2x week) and mag (aquavitro ions 15 ml / day) and use aquavitro fuel (Vitamin C and Chlorella). I have stopped dosing the fuel at this point as a place to start. Only other thing that I have changed is my salt. I went from IO to Seachem reef. Any other ideas on why these are losing color? It's killing me as these are some of my favorite corals. I do not use carbon at the moment, but I think I need to start. Other inhabitants are a few fish, a green BTA and lots of montis. TIA.

-Aaron

Eternal · May 20, 2009

Getting the DKH to 8-12 and calcium 400-450 with very minimal swings should help.

Alti · May 21, 2009

Your levels are fine. I would first recalibrate whatever you are checking your salt level with and recheck. Ive seen many lps bleach slowly in high or low salinities. I would also stop dosing anything to the tank for a while. Thats the only way to know if what you are dosing is an issue. How long is your photoperiod?

planecrazy · May 23, 2009

If I stop dosing CA and Alk it will drop to dangerously low levels. I have stopped everything else tho. I do need to doulble check salinity. I use a refract and calibrate with 0 tds RO/DI water. Photoperiod is 11 hours from 8 am to 7 pm.

acanman · May 23, 2009

did you just switch salt mixes all at once or did you gradually change over? its not good to just switch all at once since there already used to that mix... the new could have shocked your corals

Yellowtang · May 23, 2009

How long is the photo period I have read on another forum of color loss, because
of to long photo period. they were cutting back and corals were not only getting
more color but were growing faster. My take on that was the corals were getting
more light than they needed so as a defense mechanism they would produce more
protecting algaes. And that would cause excess energy spent on saving themselves.
So once the photo period was reduce they spent more energy growing and the algae
that was being used for shading reduced and the original colors came back. That
might be a thing to look at.

planecrazy · May 25, 2009

I've pretty much got this narrowed down to an alk issue. Alk is now at 6 before my water change today. CA and MG are nearly unchanged. It's almost certainly this as the corals that are bleaching are next to (within an inch) of corals that aren't, so I'm almost certain that it's not a light issue.

At this point, I'm going to automate my alk dosing with a BRS dosing pump.

Jon Warner · May 29, 2009

planecrazy said:
I've pretty much got this narrowed down to an alk issue. Alk is now at 6 before my water change today. CA and MG are nearly unchanged. It's almost certainly this as the corals that are bleaching are next to (within an inch) of corals that aren't, so I'm almost certain that it's not a light issue.

At this point, I'm going to automate my alk dosing with a BRS dosing pump.

What do you do for top-off?

planecrazy · May 31, 2009

I top off manually with RO/DI water. But, I finally figured it out for sure.

I was working on my tank yesterday and thought the temp seemed high to my feel, but the coralife digital thermometer was reading 78. It's been pretty steady at 76-78 for the last couple months. I like to run things at 80, so I've been slowly turning up my heater to get it there. The heater was set to 85. It's a Won Bros. heater, so I don't trust the temp on it, I trrust the thermometer. I decided to check it against a chepo glass aquarium thermometer that I know is accurate. It read 86. No wonder stuff has been bleaching. The tank has bee running about 6-8 degrees hotter than the thermometer.....nothing like faulty equipment to screw up a tank.

-Aaron

aquafrags · May 31, 2009

coralife temp gauges and Iwon bros a very innacurate, spend the money on a ranco to run your heater, and feel confident in not having any more temp issues