Tri-Color Odd Bleaching Pattern

jml1149 · Dec 7, 2016

Good Morning-

Last night, I checked into my tank and found this:

The burnt tip is from an alk spike while dialing in my kalk reactor a couple months ago. The front of that tip has completely healed over, the rear is starting to fill back in.

What's odd is the white pattern of what I think is bleaching on the underside of the coral. You can still see the brown polyps in the middle of the white patches, so I don't think it's STN. These areas are somewhat "shaded" by the rest of the coral and mostly due to its position and location of lights. You can see where the areas receiving full light look great, just these odd white areas have me concerned.

PE is great and the blue tips show recent growth patterns. Just concerns me that the white spots on the back popped up.

Is this normal? Just measured last night:

Salinity: 1.025
Alk: 8.1
Ca: 420
Mg: 1340
NO3: 10ppm
Phos: 0

Thanks for any advice, new to SPS so this is all very new and exciting to me.

oceanslide · Dec 7, 2016

Flatworms or anything maybe?

markalot · Dec 7, 2016

That's not bleaching, it's missing skin that has pealed off the coral. That's either RTN if rapid or STN if slow. It's most likely due to the Alk spike since damage can show up weeks or months later. Make sure your current KH is down around 7 and keep it there and it may be able to recover. That's my experience with Validas anyway.

G8trBait16 · Dec 7, 2016

I had a huge alk spike about a week and a half ago, I lost 29 of my acros. My water is finally stabilized at 7.2, and it looks like some acros are starting to repair themselves "fingers crossed".

jml1149 · Dec 8, 2016

Thank you for the replies. I didn't realize the effects of an alk spike could linger for so long! It makes sense, all of the other corals I've added since the alk spike are fine, but this one is tanking.

I pulled it out and dipped it in Revive, nothing came off. Not a single bug, worm, flatworm, red bug, etc. So I fragged the top off, and any branches I could. Glued them all down and we'll see how it goes. Thanks for the responses!