SPS Help, Strange bleaching

Matthew Dambra · Oct 6, 2017

I noticed a small patch of bleaching on my ORA green birds nest in the middle of a branch. I figured it may be a pest of some type so i took the coral out and did a fresh water dip with nothing found on the coral. It has continued to go down hill from there. I am a little confused because I had the coral for about 2 months and it was doing absolutely amazing doubled or even tripled in growth, I have a bunch of acro's in the tank so i know its not the parameters that are going down hill.
So i thought oh well maybe a freak thing but then today i noticed on my green stylo showing some bare skeleton on the underside

As you can tell this green stylo has been growing like a weed, just wondering if anyone has an idea of why this would happen, or is it normal for a branch on the underside of a stylo to seem like its losing its polyps and showing bare skeleton

Thanks for your input!

BoomCorals · Oct 6, 2017

Don't ever freshwater dip SPS. You'll likely kill them. It is normal for the underside of birdsnest to lose polyps and show bare skeleton since the underside gets no light.

Coronus · Oct 6, 2017

Right on. Sps usually die with fresh water dips. They do not tolerate it at all. It could be a fish picking or hard flow pushing the polyps apart. Not many pest eat either of the two you mentioned. Sometimes just let it ride and see what happens. Could be anything. How old is the tank?

Matthew Dambra · Oct 6, 2017

Coronus said:
Right on. Sps usually die with fresh water dips. They do not tolerate it at all. It could be a fish picking or hard flow pushing the polyps apart. Not many pest eat either of the two you mentioned. Sometimes just let it ride and see what happens. Could be anything. How old is the tank?

This tank is about 5 years old, recently got back into it and started restocking the tank and maintaining parameters. Copy that no more fresh water dip haha
I will probably just let it be, could be my fox face nipping it or something

BoomCorals said:
Don't ever freshwater dip SPS. You'll likely kill them. It is normal for the underside of birdsnest to lose polyps and show bare skeleton since the underside gets no light.

This was strange because it was on the top of the birds nest (could maybe be my fox face nipping)but on the stylo its on the underside where theres almost no light, just wasn't sure if this could be some type of pest