Stylo coral health

[Nathaniellund17]

Hello all,
Is this Stylo coral bleaching, what would you say is happening to this coral? I think this is bleaching but not sure.

I have a 180 display with 60 gallon sump. Parameters are:
Alk - 8.9
Ca - 450
Mg - 1350
Phosphates - .04
Nitrate - 18

My Par has been low, around 150. Over the last few weeks I’ve been raising the power on my lights, bringing it up to 260 (over 10 weeks using the mobius app).

Any thoughts on what I should do for this coral?

 

[Lavey29]

Should be in 250 par. Certainly appears to be struggling. Possibly due to low light caused bacteria infection. You may want to frag off dying branches to save the colony or hope that the increased light makes it rebound. Branches that lost color but still have polyps may come back. Branches bleached with no polyps probable wont.

 

[Nathaniellund17]

If I cut off branches without polyps, do I need to ensure they get thrown away-taken out of tank? If they fall into the sand, could they infect other coral?

 

[Lavey29]

If I cut off branches without polyps, do I need to ensure they get thrown away-taken out of tank? If they fall into the sand, could they infect other coral?

I doubt it. You can try and remove the whole colony and iodine or Kung fu dip it to.

Do you have other SPS showing any issues? All this of course assumes you haven't had any big swings in parameters, temp, salinity, alk, etc...

 

[Lavey29]

I recently had a huge monti digi do this. It was probably 16 inches wide. I had to cut off about 30% but the colony survived and is doing great. The huge purple stylo next to it also got infected but it was STN from the base up and out so I could cut the bad parts off and it died. It was 3 times as big as yours.