Red Sea Energy and bleaching.

[Ardeus]

I have a mixed reef and I recently began dosing Red Sea Reef Energy daily. After less than a week, I noticed the stylo Milka had lost its color.

In what circumstances can this happen?

I dose Kalk with vinegar daily and I had GFO, which I removed after testing the phosphates and they were undetectable.

The tank has 100 gallons and 14 fish and I feed 5 times a day.

 

[Reeferdood]

What are all of your water parameters? Unless you overdosed energy I would bet it would be something different. Did you strip the phosphate rapidly?

 

[Ardeus]

All parameters were within normal range for a reef tank, alk 9, Ca 420.

I suspected that a depletion of phosphate could have been the cause, so I removed the GFO. The GFO had been changed 10 days before.

 

[Reeferdood]

What are your nitrates reading?

 

[Ardeus]

I don't know, I never test them.

 

[Reeferdood]

Nitrates are pretty important to know.
You need to test for nitrate, phosphate, calcium, alkalinity and magnesium to really begin to understand what is going on in your box of water.

 

[Ardeus]

I did an ICP test a couple of months ago but they don't test nitrates.

I never really cared much about nitrates until now because I never had any situation that made me suspect there was a problem caused by nitrates.

 

[Ardeus]

I just wanted to know what other factors in conjunction with the reef energy could cause that.

 

[Reeferdood]

14 fish fed 5 times a day would be reason enough to keep an eye on the nitrate IMHO.

 

[Reeferdood]

I just wanted to know what other factors in conjunction with the reef energy could cause that.

Some corals can just bleach for no apparent reason at all but unless you really know your parameters trying to determine the problem is a crapshoot.

 

[marinesnow]

In all the posts I’ve ever seen, there hasn’t been correlation between Red Sea energy and bleaching. But there are a few confirmed causes for loss of coral color: 1. Temperature, 2. Lack of nutrients (phosphate and nitrates 0), 3. Lighting the coral past it’s saturation point, and 4. Lighting your coral with with solely the red spectrum. If I were you I’d look into the most possible of these.

 

[Ardeus]

14 fish fed 5 times a day would be reason enough to keep an eye on the nitrate IMHO.

I will consider that. High nitrates usually give other type of signals, like lots of algae but I am going to get a test.

 

[Ardeus]

In all the posts I’ve ever seen, there hasn’t been correlation between Red Sea energy and bleaching. But there are a few confirmed causes for loss of coral color: 1. Temperature, 2. Lack of nutrients (phosphate and nitrates 0), 3. Lighting the coral past it’s saturation point, and 4. Lighting your coral with with solely the red spectrum. If I were you I’d look into the most possible of these.

It must be lack of nutrients then. I skim very wet and clean the cup daily and I began using another kind of GFO. Thanks.