Preventing and Managing Coral Bleaching

[Brisk]

How can I prevent and manage coral bleaching events in my reef tank?

 

[Waters]

It depends....are you talking about actual bleaching or are you talking about RTN/STN? They are two very different problems.

 

[Brisk]

I had to look up what RTN/STN are. That's also new information for me to look up. I was actually inquiring about bleaching but what are some ways to prevent and manage RTN/STN too?

 

[shakacuz]

I had to look up what RTN/STN are. That's also new information for me to look up. I was actually inquiring about bleaching but what are some ways to prevent and manage RTN/STN too?

personally, i believe a stable biological ecosystem and water parameters will lead to the prevention of STN/RTN. of course light plays a part in this as well, but i would say that comes after.

most stony corals don't do well in new systems unless seeded with pre-existing rock or media which could be from a good biological ecosystem/diversity amongst the rock/media (which is why most suggest always going live rock from sources of Tampa, etc). light is an obvious topic and should always be stable or slowly ramped up(like how when you first get a coral you place on sand bed or on the glass at different levels to allow the coral(s) to get used to the light. and you work up appropriately)

lastly, i believe making sure pollutants do not get into the tank that could harm corals or other critters like metals(rust, aluminum, etc)

edit: lighting definitely plays a part in bleaching, as is nitrate/phosphate (too low or too high)

 

[brandon429]

knowing when to turn down light power is the top bleach controller in reefing

I have some work on bleach prevention. we (participants in the work threads) identified these common reefing events as bleachers unless special controls are in place:




-emergency tank moves or planned tank moves. the actual transfer isn't too hard, but the new setup risks bleaching if the same power lighting carries over. when effecting tank moves or upgrades, re ramp the new setup's lighting from a much lower rating over 10-14 days.

-when corals show rtn or stn from unknown causes. the first move you make when sps tissue begins to slough is to drop the light power % rate, then work up slowly 10-14 days as you seek out rtn causes.

-when the temps are insulted through power outages, sustained issues making high or low temps really stress the system. full lighting after events like that is a near certain bleacher.


proofs:

here's us managing about 400 tank transfers with not one bleach event. we use dropped light power on the new setup to run all these jobs. if we didn't do that, there would be multiple reported bleach events. We used to not require light re ramping for tank transfer jobs; an increase in reported bleach events made us seek out the cause and we show the cause was keeping the same light power on the brand new setup. re acclimate light power during all reef tank insults for top bleach prevention. we cured the matter as involved in tank transfers by literally just dropping light power for everyone's final setup.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

a thread on reef tank CPR and crash recovery with work examples, light % controlling mattered bigtime and is mentioned in the descrip

Reef Tank CPR - power outage biology, crash arrest, and recovery

Team Don‘t add bottled bacteria to the display during crash arrest as the cycle bacteria aren’t killed in still water. There are times where bottled bacteria can lower ammonia in fish holding containers especially if travel or transport is occurring, but by rinsing these displays out vs dosing...

www.reef2reef.com

predict where bleaching might occur, have a plan.

*RTN and STN causatives aren't always lighting that's for sure. a host of bacterial, viral and systemic causatives can be in play. not knowing when to reduce lighting in response to coral insults can be a driver of full bleach events that were otherwise preventable that's for sure.

Doing a light power re ramp wouldn't even hurt a reef tank not under stress, which is why it's such as effective method to know. it's simulating a cloudy spell on the reefs, which resolves over time just like nature does.