SPS bleaching after big temp swing

[anthonymckay]

We had a big rain and windstorm roll through my area last weekend. Unfortunately on Saturday night shortly after I went to bed we lost power, and it stayed off for the next entire day. I didn't notice the power loss till I woke up nearly 9 hours later. My 200gal had dropped from 78F to 68F and sat there for a while with no water movement. By the time I woke up and fired up the generator for our house I had 1 dead Anthias, and most of the coral was closed up and looking stressed. Took quite a few hours more for the temp to slowly climb back up to 78F
Over the next 24 hours I lost a Walt Disney colony to RTN.
24 hours after that all my sps are bleaching out and polyps are closed.

Wondering what I can do to help them recover. I am lowering my peak light intensity for the next couple weeks by disabling my LED bars from turning (leaving just my 5 kessils). Anything else people might suggest to help lower the stress on them? Seeing how they look right now, I wont be surprised if more start RTN'ing... fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

 

[Alex Cataldo]

My best advice would be to keep especially all and all of your parameters as stable as possible. I might also run some carbon since that colony died. But the reduced photo period and intensity is definitely going to help.

 

[Pod_01]

Do check your Alk and few times a day. If the SPS and other corals are upset you might have to cut back on dosing or you will end up with Alk swing as well…
Remove the dead corals, they will just pollute the water.

Good luck,

 

[anthonymckay]

Do check your Alk and few times a day. If the SPS and other corals are upset you might have to cut back on dosing or you will end up with Alk swing as well…
Remove the dead corals, they will just pollute the water.

Good luck,

Luckily my Alkatronic tests alk every 4 hours and shut off the kalkwasser doser if the Alk exceeds my set threshold. Downside is my pH takes a hit when kalk dosing is shut down.

 

[anthonymckay]

Ugh, woke up this morning to my large strawberry shortcake colony completely RTN'd overnight.

 

[Lavey29]

Sorry for your loss. I had power out to and tank went down to 68 but I had no losses. I think maybe due to my battery back up keeping flow in the tank even though temp dropped.

 

[anthonymckay]

Sorry for your loss. I had power out to and tank went down to 68 but I had no losses. I think maybe due to my battery back up keeping flow in the tank even though temp dropped.

Yeah, I suspect a few things are at play here. Lack of flow for such a long period combined with the big temp swing. Also should have just turned off all the lights when I powered everything back up with the generator. I'm thinking maybe the lighting pushed the already stressed corals over the edge and caused the bleaching and RTN issues. Some of the torches that were looking deflated and ticked off following all this are plumbing back up again. I'm starting to see some polyps poking out of some of the bleached sps now... so that's a good sign at least.