Acro dying???

[Sharkbait25]

Hey everyone, very new to keeping sps and i had bought a few sps a couple weeks ago and yesterday when i came home from work i noticed that my purple acro was white from the near the base to more than half way up. The other two sps looks like they are doing ok. I've read about SPN?? but not sure if that's my problem, my water paramaters are :

alk 12 dkh
calcium 500
mag 1500
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates .5
ph 8.2
phospate .5

The tank is a 50 gallon 48*13*19

They are under two 150 MH my purple acro is about 6 inches from the top of the water, i had just got my MH two or three weeks ago and been playing with the height from the water to see if i can keep them high enough to keep my temps down, they have been at 82-84, i know this is high and that they do better at 75-78 but i'm working on getting a chiller, i actually found one lastnight on CL, and hope to buy it today to try and save my corals. I looked up the max temp and i've read that most corals are found in waters that are in the 80-85 depending on the origin of the coral, I've also watched a documentary on corals that a two degree change in the water temp has been known to cause coral bleaching in some coral reefs, they showed a time laps film where a coral bleached by two degree increase. If this is the reason then i'll def get my chiller, but the only thing i can think of other than water temp rising is that i had a green acro positioned 8 inches away towrads the bottom right and a two or three nights ago i distubed it and it started to let out a string of white stuff like it's gutts, similar to when you mess with some mushrooms and they spew out their insides, so my green acro was stringing out a bunch of white strips and those strips were on my purple acro, can this be the main reason why my purple acro is dying? I read that some corals can produce a mucus that will kill off neighboring corlas. How can i prevent this? I've seen plenty of tanks with acro's next to each other and they live peacefully? Please help this newbie out, I'd hate to lose anymore corals. Also i just got purchased salifert test kits: alk, cal, mag, last sun so i just started testing for those elements, from the readings i got, my cal was off the charts and so was my mag, alk was at 12-12.8. I dont think those paramaters would have caused my acro to start bleaching but i'm not the expert. Any info or suggestions would be much appreciated. please help... Thanks in advance

 

[Sharkbait25]

I just want to add that I knew that my salinity was high 1.028 and was flushing out my new R/0 DI system and so i just added drinking water to lower the SG. now it's at 1.025

 

[DopeCantWin]

Because it is bleaching from the base up is an indication the issue is the water and not the light. Your Alkalinity is pretty high. 9 is good, 7-8 if you're doing ULNS. Before you get the chiller, I'd try a simple fan over the top of your water. You'd be surprised how much they lower the temperature. I'd bet that alone will get you down under 80. Also your calcium is high. I'd aim for 420.

 

[Sharkbait25]

Because it is bleaching from the base up is an indication the issue is the water and not the light. Your Alkalinity is pretty high. 9 is good, 7-8 if you're doing ULNS. Before you get the chiller, I'd try a simple fan over the top of your water. You'd be surprised how much they lower the temperature. I'd bet that alone will get you down under 80. Also your calcium is high. I'd aim for 420.

I saw those fans advertised and wondered if they worked well, I just got my test kit and so i didn't know what my levels were till sun. But have you ever had another acro string out some white stuff and kill off neighboring corals?? Thanks for the suggestion. I found a jbj 1/10 chiller used for 160, so i may or may not just go that route. Is there anything i can do to stop or save my coral? should i try to frag off the pieces that haven't been bleached yet? I also read some theads on here where peoples corals were bleached and recovered, and that's from being completely white. Thanks for the reply. :beer:

 

[allsps40]

PO4 at .5 is kind of high. That can cause issues as well. I agree that a fan in most cases will drop the temp down 2-4 degrees. I have yet to need my fan on my 75g with 2 250w mh 8 inches from the water, tank runs at 78-79. 84 is pretty high but as long as it did not go from 80 to 84 quickly I see no problem and have had it happen over several hours with not ill effects. I did have a drop from 78 to 74 and that ****ed my sps took a month to recover. You did not say how old the tank is and what else is in the tank with it.

 

[DopeCantWin]

I saw those fans advertised and wondered if they worked well, I just got my test kit and so i didn't know what my levels were till sun. But have you ever had another acro string out some white stuff and kill off neighboring corals?? Thanks for the suggestion. I found a jbj 1/10 chiller used for 160, so i may or may not just go that route. Is there anything i can do to stop or save my coral? should i try to frag off the pieces that haven't been bleached yet? I also read some theads on here where peoples corals were bleached and recovered, and that's from being completely white. Thanks for the reply. :beer:

I just use a simple clip on desk fan in my sump. I'd just get a simple cheap desk fan to try out first. See how far it gets the temperature down, and if it works see what works best aesthetically. To save your corals I'd start by doing a bunch of water changes to get your parameters right. It seems that even if you do clip them, you haven't solved your problem. Someone else might have a better idea.

 

[dzhuo]

They are under two 150 MH my purple acro is about 6 inches from the top of the water, i had just got my MH two or three weeks ago and been playing with the height from the water to see if i can keep them high enough to keep my temps down, they have been at 82-84, i know this is high and that they do better at 75-78 but i'm working on getting a chiller, i actually found one lastnight on CL, and hope to buy it today to try and save my corals. I looked up the max temp and i've read that most corals are found in waters that are in the 80-85 depending on the origin of the coral, I've also watched a documentary on corals that a two degree change in the water temp has been known to cause coral bleaching in some coral reefs, they showed a time laps film where a coral bleached by two degree increase.

Your temp is more than fine. A couple of degree swings isn't the problem. There is no evidence that temp swings (within the range they used to) are stressful corals. It's not unheard of to record up to 9 degree of swings every few hours. ~82F is roughly the summer time average around the world (especially Indo-Pacific where 95% of where our corals come from). The conclusion of the study you mention is not definite and the bleaching is not caused by temp as singular factor. For more discussion: Temperature question. My tank goes from 79F to 86F every day. This is recorded 9PM just a couple of weeks ago 2 hours before lights off. It's over 84F and would continue to go up 1 or 2 degrees until lights out at 11PM:

Your phosphate, however, is 100x NSW level and is likely part of the issue (combined with a new tank perhaps).

 

[Sharkbait25]

The tank is fairly new, i did not mention that. I'd say it's been up for 2.5 months and it's a mix of mostly LPS and 3 SPS, i did have it next to a candy coral and thought maybe it was stung but haven't noticed it. Not much fish, just two yellow watchman goby and 1 damsel. Once i tested the water for CAL/MAG/PHOS/ and ALK i knew they were high but after i had already put the sps in. The other two SPS which is a green monti and green acro are doing fine. Their polyps are out and look normal. But the purple one, it's polyps had not been out much, i noticed that they were more out during lights out, like in the morning when i check them out before the lights come on. I'll do some water changes today to see if i can alter my levels, I did use some brightwell calicon and alk 8.3 and magnisium additive on sun when i got my test kit along with those suppliment. I just added them one after another based on what the bottle said. Could dosing them in that fashion have affected my Acro? Like i mentioned the other two sps look like they are doing fine and they dont show any signs of suffering from the same condition. I want to thank everyone that has replied, your comments and suggestions are much appreciated. Thank you RC for having a site like this where you can find some help!!! cheers!!

 

[dzhuo]

A new tank is probably the reason why you are having problem. You don't need to add anything. Just be patient and give your tank a chance to mature more. A few acro frags will not have much impact on anything such as alk/cal/mag, adding addictive this early probably does more harm than helpful. Water change and time is the best medicine (and apparently it's a lost art now).

Your other acros might be doing fine or it might not be. Do a quick search here and you will realize lots of new tanks claim to have success for a few months before things took a turn for the worse. Unless you put the acros in fresh water, virtually every corals should do "fine" for a few weeks. This is not necessary an indicator of long term health.

 

[Sharkbait25]

Because it is bleaching from the base up is an indication the issue is the water and not the light. Your Alkalinity is pretty high. 9 is good, 7-8 if you're doing ULNS. Before you get the chiller, I'd try a simple fan over the top of your water. You'd be surprised how much they lower the temperature. I'd bet that alone will get you down under 80. Also your calcium is high. I'd aim for 420.

So i managed to get my hands on a computer power supply and some computer fans and wired them and placed them on the tank and wow did these actually work out to keep my temps down. I went from 82-84 degrees to a now constant 75.0-75.5 degrees with just two fans. I'm glad that my father works at a computer repair shop and he was able to find me a thin power supply and a couple fans. I thought 4 would do the job but just two fans has done well. Thank you so much for the suggestion, this little DIY saved me $200+ on a chiller.

As for my purple acro, i decided to try and frag six 1 inch branches to see if i could save them the day after i noticed the bleaching but as of now every piece including the original branch which was about 8-9 inches tall is now completely white. I'll leave them alone and see if they ever recover. I've read a couple post where someone has had a few come back from being completely white. The other three sps seem to being doing ok at this time and all my LPS and soft corals are doing fine. Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I'm glad at least i was able to get some good suggestions for my temp and as of now it's working great!! Thank you again..

Cheers

 

[duke62]

if you are new to sps i wouldnt dive into a hard sps like a purple acro.try your hands in digi or birdsnests and see how they are doing after a few months .def stay away from purples and blues for a bit they are harder to keep there colors up.in a few months if you are still interested in SPS start adding a few acros

 

[deadmeat]

I agree, its rather soon to attempt higher level coral with such a new tank. With that being said, you do have others doing fine. A bottom up bleaching could be a water issue, but have you been inspecting the coral closely? I have seen an issue recently with acro eating nudibranch in the hobby (they love blue). They will often appear as late as a month after the coral is introduced into tank. If you have any they will be less than 3mm in length. If you see what appears to be an extremely tiny clump of algae that is also bleached out to white anywhere on the sps investigate with tweezers...
Just a thought, might save you headache...

Tom