Acro bleaching between branches

[organism]

I've never had this happen so not sure what's going on. Acro has been looking like this for a few months now, seems like it's slowly spreading but it's hard to tell. The flesh isn't dead since there's no algae growth or anything, it's just very white... Tank has other Acros that look awesome, this is the only weird one.

It's been dipped with nothing coming out, and there have been no new tank additions for over a year so pests are unlikely. I've tried lower light with no changes so it's probably not light related. I use H2Ocean salt, TDS from RO/DI is 0. I use a doser and parameters are stable, values are

Alk: 7.5
Calc: 440
Mag: 1450
Potassium: 400
Nitrates: 3
Phosphates: .04
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78

Anyone have any ideas?

Everything else in the tank is around this quality which is what's really throwing me off on this one.

 

[nashorn]

Gee.... I seen this with some of my sps. I just though it's wasn't getting enough light in those spots.

 

[organism]

I was thinking too much light, but I took some frags and put them in the highest light spot in my tank where they're doing fine. The colony grows and heals well too including the base, not sure what's going on.

 

[minus9]

Any change in lighting? New bulbs? Intensity? Color?
I have a humilis that was aqua-marine light blue when I got it, then it slowly turned emerald green, but now is slowly going back to it's original color, but it's starting in the interior branches like yours. Maybe it's going through a color shift to a more vibrant lighter color?

 

[organism]

Any change in lighting? New bulbs? Intensity? Color?

Not until well after this started, upgraded to Radions last week. Before that no light changes.

 

[Potatohead]

Maybe flow is not reaching these areas very well?

 

[organism]

It's been getting good flow, at first I thought it was maybe too much but putting it in an area with less water movement didn't seem to make much difference.

 

[jda]

It looks like a lack-of-light thing to me too. Too much light, which is not really possible, results in tip issues, not down the coral. It is probably not actually a lack of light, but rather from shadowing. Do you have a small-point light source? It does not look like it from the pictures with a good light spread, but I don't know how you took them. Shading and shadowing can be a really big issue with LED as colonies start to emerge - no problem while frags, but frags are easy and colonies are not.

 

[organism]

Haha I dunno about too much light not being possible, we've all burned stuff It was in the same spot for over a year with no issues though... I was running Halos and it was between 2 so there wasn't shadowing, imo some of the bleached spot areas wouldn't be possible if it was shadowing since the angles are all over the place.

This is where it lived for about 14 months until I started moving it around, it was a section with pretty high light with Acros around it doing well.

 

[Acronic]

I don't believe that it's anything to worry about. I've had that happen to a few of my acros and they never seemed to be affected by anything. I've just attributed that to really accelerated growth.

Check out my thread, post #106 and you can see one with similar structure

 

[organism]

It has been growing like crazy. Are you sure it's 106? Not seeing it...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22150312&postcount=106

 

[Acronic]

Yea that's the one. Second pic.

Not exactly the same look as yours. However, at the roots of the branches it's almost as if the coral "forgets" to grow the cup shaped coralites.

Your coral does have a more stark appearance of lacking zoox but seems healthy looking to me overall.

 

[undertai]

You sure it's not just shifting to different color? I have the same looking Coral, it's blue with white along the branches.

Sent from my F3213 using Tapatalk

 

[organism]

I'm pretty sure, it's been green due to being moved around a lot to lower light areas and I'm guessing a lower light bluer spectrum with less whites as I acclimate it to the Radions. It's been faded for a bit and the natural color is nothing like what it's showing, it's actually a crazy nice RR piece I've been growing out for a while. Even when it was colored up a few months ago it was showing the bleached parts though...

 

[alazo1]

Organism, what's the update on this coral?. I have a few that are doing the same.

Albert

 

[organism]

It bleached out completely along with a few other pieces due to a bunch of different issues happening at once unfortunately. Hopefully in a few months it'll be back to how good it looked in the photos here :/

 

[Paleodude]

I'M HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM! I'm very happy to see that I'm not the only one. Only my acroporas are bleaching/waisting in the areas between the branches, or said another way, on the old areas that aren't actively growing.

An important note here is that these same colonies and frags are actively growing and encrusting. The new growth is perfectly healthy with excellent color! However, it's not immune to this problem, and as the new growth ages the wasting will progress onto it.

I have one question for you:. Are you using Zeovit or other carbon dosing? I developed this problem while "giving zeovit a try.". I never had this problem before zeovit. I'm currently weaning my tank off zeovit and as the nutrient levels increase it'll be interesting to observe if the wasting heals itself.

I have a 250 watt metal halide over my tank and that have changed in over 3 years. It's not a lighting issue, I can tell you that.

These acros have been dipped in Bayer and the entire tank treated for red bugs using Dr G's Coral dip. So it's not red bugs. Also, I've gone through AEFW before and know exactly what the bite marks look like... It's not that either.

My current working theory is that the nutrients are very low, particularly phosphate, due to the zeovit. I think that the Coral is cannibalizing it's older non-growing tissue to feed the new growth. I know that may not make sense because why wouldn't the Coral just decide to not grow instead of cannibalizing itself... Like I said it's just a theory. I'm wondering is some of those secret ingredients in the zeovit system are responsible.

Tank parameters are below:
K~360, Mg~1360, NO3~5-10, PO4~0 (undetectable using Salifert test kit), Ca~430, Alk~5.3dkh

Alk was running a little low and I adjusted my dosing pumps.