Please Help - Everything is Bleaching

[johnbr]

I would say your ramping up to your peak setting very fast and holding there for a long time. I like to build up to my peak more gradually.

Right now you probably don’t have enough white light. I run my white channel at 25% and the overal intensity is 70%. I know if I go from my settings to your I will get browning and bleaching of corals. Sometimes too much light and too little light cause the same look.

What did your schedule look like before this recent change to lower intensity?

Exactly that's why I think I could ramp up gradually the white. I've always used 100% blues at 35% because all corals that I bought were at WWC under same settings.

All the corals that are in my tank now are new frags. The bleached ones I moved to a 10 old friends tank until they recover.

So is that okay from 5 to 8 for just one hour?

 

[John3]

I think it’s fine. Does WWC run at 35% overal intensity? That seems low to me but maybe their tanks are very shallow.

I run a 29g biocube and 70% overal intensity is the seeet spot for me. I have mostly lps and softies. My sps is up high, maybe 6” max under the water and is thriving.

 

[johnbr]

I think it’s fine. Does WWC run at 35% overal intensity? That seems low to me but maybe their tanks are very shallow.

I run a 29g biocube and 70% overal intensity is the seeet spot for me. I have mostly lps and softies. My sps is up high, maybe 6” max under the water and is thriving.

Overall is around 70% but they told me not to use that and increase gradually.

 

[Daniel Waters]

Whatever you do, just go slow. You are doing LPS and softies if I recall correctly. There's not a reason you need to worry about cranking your lights up like you might need to do with acropora. Honestly, if it were me, I'd set the color channels to what I like visually and just move the intensity down and then slowly adjust my intensity up each week from there. Tweaking each color channel each week would drive me crazy.

 

[John3]

Overall is around 70% but they told me not to use that and increase gradually.

Think of it this way. At some point you will have a light schedule that works. Your not going to change it every time you add a new coral. That’s why generally you place low and move up to find a sweet spot in your tank.

My guess is the corals got light shocked, it can take a long time to recover but they can. It’s the expectation of seeing immediate improvement that normally keeps people playing with the settings which makes it worse. I still say go to a schedule and settings that are proven.