NEED HELP, corals are bleaching from the base where they have been encrusting :(

scoobysnack77 · Jul 2, 2014

im stumped, my acros have been doing wonderful for months and for the past week I've noticed they are bleaching out by the base where they have encrusted. its mainly the new growth and its moving upwards pretty quickly. my parameters are salinity 1.026, alk 7.9, calcium 390, magnesium 1700 , nitrates 0 and phosphates .02. i know my mag is high but i can't stop it. i do weekly water changes and i don't even dose it so its either coming from my reef crystals salt or from the KZ coral vitalizer i add everyday. i use a doser to dose a 2 part and i also dose kalkwasser ontop of that. i heard kalk eats up magnesium but not in my case. i dose potassium,iron,strontium and amino acids weekly by hand. i just changed out my GFO yesterday and i just changed out my carbon today. i hope i can reverse this because most of my acros are affected so I'm really upset right now

deerhunter06 · Jul 2, 2014

seems like every time I hear about STN or RTN the person had always just changed their GFO, or added some type of phosphate reducer. Not sure if that's coincidence or what??
also sediment can cause bleaching.

scoobysnack77 · Jul 2, 2014

deerhunter06 said:
seems like every time I hear about STN or RTN the person had always just changed their GFO, or added some type of phosphate reducer. Not sure if that's coincidence or what??
also sediment can cause bleaching.

well i always rinse my gfo before adding it to the reactor. that was last week that i did that and more corals are showing these signs. I've been using gfo for over a year now and doing the same rinsing as I'm doing now so i can't understand why they are not happy now.

RedReefer · Jul 2, 2014

scoobysnack77 said:
well i always rinse my gfo before adding it to the reactor. that was last week that i did that and more corals are showing these signs. I've been using gfo for over a year now and doing the same rinsing as I'm doing now so i can't understand why they are not happy now.

Maybe just a stronger or bad batch of GFO that your normal rinsing techniques didn't cleanse enough. I have better looking sps with no GFO. It could be a # of things maybe a foreign contaminate got in the water coloum. Something that we don't or can't test for. Good luck! Sorry this is happening!

scoobysnack77 · Jul 2, 2014

RedReefer said:
Maybe just a stronger or bad batch of GFO that your normal rinsing techniques didn't cleanse enough. I have better looking sps with no GFO. It could be a # of things maybe a foreign contaminate got in the water coloum. Something that we don't or can't test for. Good luck! Sorry this is happening!

it could be my girlfriend who does her hair in my bedroom where the tank is. she uses small amounts or hairspray across the room from the tank so thats a possibility if so i think the carbon i just changed out might help. should i do another water change? . i was thinking it was the climbing magnesium. and if i don't use gfo my phosphates get out of control.

reefer Ard · Jul 3, 2014

I am not sure how big your tank is or what you have in it but what is causing your phosphates to get out of control? Are you running with a sump? As far as the Magnessium, you may also want to figure out what is making that spike so much. I know somethings are there to help but try to control that a little or don't put as much Coral Vitalizer in.

I would try to focus on the phosphates and what is causing that to spike though more than anything. Try to eliminate the cause of that or keep it to a minimum without GFO because even others have had problems with GFO usually being the cause of bleaching.

scoobysnack77 · Jul 3, 2014

reefer Ard said:
I am not sure how big your tank is or what you have in it but what is causing your phosphates to get out of control? Are you running with a sump? As far as the Magnessium, you may also want to figure out what is making that spike so much. I know somethings are there to help but try to control that a little or don't put as much Coral Vitalizer in.

I would try to focus on the phosphates and what is causing that to spike though more than anything. Try to eliminate the cause of that or keep it to a minimum without GFO because even others have had problems with GFO usually being the cause of bleaching.

well my phosphates get a tad high just from feeding my corals and fish. i just found out today by testing my salt that i got a bad batch once again from reef crystals. same thing happened before. my magnesium spiked. so I'm switching to red sea salt and doing a big water change today. then I'm going to do small water changes all next week til my magnesium is where it should be. but the spiking of magnesium never caused my corals to bleach around the base. i think my nitrates being at zero might have something to do with it. so i removed some of my denitrate stones out of my sump. either way both of those parameters could be better. i run a huge with chaeto to answer your question

EpicWin · Jul 4, 2014

I had this problem when I used ROX8 carbon. A brilliant reefer told me that it was my problem so I switched to lignite. Problem solved.

jewilson83 · Jul 4, 2014

What brand of carbon do you use?

jewilson83 · Jul 4, 2014

Is the bleaching spreading upwards? To save the Acro you may have to frag the rest.

TriggerThis · Jul 4, 2014

If you have acquired an infestation of Acro Eating Flatworms your acros will start doing that as they're being eaten and dying.
Blow on them with a turkey Baster.
See if flat works come off.

scoobysnack77 · Jul 4, 2014

jewilson83 said:
What brand of carbon do you use?

i use brs carbon.

scoobysnack77 · Jul 4, 2014

jewilson83 said:
Is the bleaching spreading upwards? To save the Acro you may have to frag the rest.

it starts at the new growth at the base and moves up.

scoobysnack77 · Jul 4, 2014

TriggerThis said:
If you have acquired an infestation of Acro Eating Flatworms your acros will start doing that as they're being eaten and dying.
Blow on them with a turkey Baster.
See if flat works come off.

i don't see any but I'll try it

jewilson83 · Jul 4, 2014

Instead of a turkey baster...... If you can take the acros off the rock, plug etc. shake it in a container of your own tank water. That way if there is any flat worms, you can get rid of them instead of blowing them in another part of your tank.

jewilson83 · Jul 4, 2014

scoobysnack77 said:
it starts at the new growth at the base and moves up.

From the first day you noticed the bleaching. Is the bleaching moving upwards?

scoobysnack77 · Jul 4, 2014

jewilson83 said:
Instead of a turkey baster...... If you can take the acros off the rock, plug etc. shake it in a container of your own tank water. That way if there is any flat worms, you can get rid of them instead of blowing them in another part of your tank.

i just shook a few in a iodine mix and nothing came off. So I think I can rule that out

jewilson83 · Jul 7, 2014

How are the corals doing?

scoobysnack77 · Jul 7, 2014

jewilson83 said:
How are the corals doing?

Getting worse. I was told by a reputable source that gfo and carbon remove valuable trace elements so I should take them offline for now and reduce them by 50% when I have to use them again. Today I also discovered that my ro/di Tds meter read 004, it was 000 a couple weeks ago. Could that cause all my Acros to bleach from the base?

jewilson83 · Jul 7, 2014

scoobysnack77 said:
Getting worse. I was told by a reputable source that gfo and carbon remove valuable trace elements so I should take them offline for now and reduce them by 50% when I have to use them again. Today I also discovered that my ro/di Tds meter read 004, it was 000 a couple weeks ago. Could that cause all my Acros to bleach from the base?

004 is not perfect but still a good reading. Read more than once. That's not enough to effect your corals. You would see things like increased algae and bacteria i.e. Cyano with bad RO water.