Advice regarding bleaching, polyp extension, lighting, and coral placement

[Shooter7]

Posted this over in the SPS forum, but am going to post this here too as getting help over there is somewhat hit or miss.

Ok, in another thread I've had a few people tell me a coral I had a pic of was getting bleached, but no one is telling me exactly what to do about it. I'm not new to SW, but am new to SPS. I have purchased several frags from a few different members in here in hopes of getting nice, healthy specimens to start with. I'd appreciate input on how to keep them healthy and colorful.

My last water parameters are as follows:

pH 8.2
alk 10 dkh
Ca 380
Mg 1280
NO3 and PO4 are undetectable per salifert test
temp ranges from 79.5 - 81
I have been dripping kalk but still need to get an ATO set up to make it more regular.
Lights are on 9 hours per day, 2 x 250w 12k Reeflux. The lights are about 8 inches above the water and a little over 9 months old now.
I have a little over 30x flow in the tank.

First up is the coral in question regarding bleaching:

This coral is almost directly below a light, it's up about 7 - 8 inches from the bottom of the tank. If it's indeed bleaching, where would be the best place for me to move it to in order to help it?

Another coral I have is a very nice frag of a green colored, "super hairy" mille. I don't have a pic available right now. It is also directly below a light about a foot under the surface. This coral has done some extensive encrustation of its base, but it is nowhere near being "super hairy" anymore. More like super stubble is all. Would like some input on what may be going on with it and what I should perhaps do to help it.

On the other side of the tank from that one is an ORA blue mille who is also encrusting its base well and has decent polyp extension, but has gone mostly brown. It's the only coral in the tank to have really done this color change. Input on this one please?

I have several others that seem to be doing well right now. A pocillipora, green slimer, and cali tort all seem to be holding their color and growing. Several other frags are really new, so it remains to be seen with them.

I'd really like for all of these guys to be healthy and happy in here. I'm working on continuing to make my water conditions more stable and possibly adding more flow. It's a mixed reef right now. I'm not particularly looking for a jam packed SPS reef, just that the ones that I have now to look good. Thank you very much for constructive input towards this end.

 

[Dert42]

i have NO idea if this applies, but:

mjpelikan had a nice little sps that ended up bleaching to nothing. it ended up because it was getting too much flow.
so that may be something to look at.

 

[saltyunderground]

My first few thoughts are light problem, flow problem or another coral nearby secreating something or stinging it, or it needs food.

As the people from whom you bought the frags what color light, what type of light and how far from the light source the frags were. How much flow was it in and what do they feed their SPS.

How often are you doing water changes to replenish the needed nutrients?

 

[Shooter7]

Trying to do about 20% water change every couple of weeks.

Here is a pic of it just a few months ago. It has grown pretty well and still has good polyp extension. And yes, all those possible issues have occurred to me as well, I'm trying to figure out what to do to help. The corals I have came from 3 different people and they are not always available to talk to. They are not locals. I am not feeding them anything specifically, and feeding SPS is kind of a vague topic. Some people swear by feeding this or that, while others, particularly some who have beautiful tanks that I bought these frags from, don't feed anything and just blow off their rocks every once in awhile and say that feeds the corals.

oops...forgot to add pic:

 

[Shooter7]

Should I move this guy up or down under these circumstances? I don't want to make things worse.

 

[Shooter7]

Well, I went ahead and moved it up to see what will happen. Any further advice is appreciated, if there is any...

 

[dphins]

Browning out is usually a lighting issue. Your bulbs are getting older and probably losing a lot of par. On the other hand, bleaching can be from to much lighting, which I doubt you have. I have had corals that bleach out for no apparent reasons. All other corals would be doing great, with just one struggling. I just seems like it is hit or miss.
All my milles have been really hairy and had excellent color. When selling frags to other people, they would have problems keeping the same color and hairyness. I always had a ton of flow, but it was always how you use your flow. I have always liked nice wide flow because it blows across corals keeping them happy, but not to strong to injure them.
As far as colors, I would think water quality would make the biggest difference. I have tried different lights and I was able to keep really nice colors although they may have shifted to different shades under different color temp bulbs. My parameters on my water was usually very steady. My temp was between 80-82. My calcium was always around 450 and my alk was between 6-8. I know that sounds low, but it worked. My ph was also low, I had a hard time keeping it around 8. In the morning before the lights came on, the ph was around 7.8, then it would climb up to 8.2 at night. It seemed like when I ran phosban, my corals would do much better. So there must of been phosphates in my tank but it's kinda hard to measure phosphates because you can't measure all types of phosphates. I also always ran carbon, it seemed to make a difference. When I had the most success, I was doing weekly water changes, about 10 gallons a weekend. I'm not saying this is how it's done, but it worked for me in the past and hopefully in the future.
Mike

 

[Shooter7]

Thanks Mike. I've been spending a lot of time the last few days in the SPS and lighting forums trying to come up with what my next bulbs are going to be. I'm kind of sad because I love the color of these bulbs, yet their PAR leaves something to be desired. Have been trying to run something a little blue with no added supplemental lighting, but I may not be able to do that looking at some of my choices. Have talked with Roy a little about his 175w Iwasakis, but I'd have to buy new ballasts as well. So, I'm trying to see what I come up with. Of course, XM 10k's keep coming up. Any advice on lighting besides the XM's would be appreciated. Not saying I won't get the XM's, just curious as to other choices. And I'll have to look at maybe getting some VHO actinics or something.

Good info on the flow and such. I'm running my Seios which seem to have a sporadic wide flow, so hopefully I'm ok there. I'm running carbon and phosphate remover (PHOSaR) in a canister that gets cleaned regularly. I need to come up with a way to make water changes less time consuming so that I can do them more often. I've got about 30 gallons ready to go right now, so hopefully in the next day or two I'll get that done. Thanks again.

 

[saltyunderground]

I was hoping Mike would chime in.

We have 10K MH lights with actinic T5s on our new set up. I have never seen so much growth and great color out of our SPS as we have had in the new system. The lights are quite close to the corals. But we are only running the lights about 7.5 hours a day. Because the tank is in a window, it also gets natural light too.

I was leaving carbon in the tank all of the time. But I read recently that carbon will remove trace elements from the water if left over time. So I have taken it out.

Dave, bring your questions to the November SEASL meeting. The topic is water chemistry, and we have lined up a speaker who, in my opinion at least, is the most qualified local authority to speak on water chemistry issues.

 

[dphins]

By the way, I ran my 10k Ushio's 10 hrs and my T-5's 12 hrs a day. If you look at the videos of my tank, look at the top of the water. I had very good water movement which made a ton of difference in making your corals happy.

 

[Chelsey]

lighting of the coral could be because of lack of nutrients

try feeding a little more to the tank

this is chad dang cookies

 

[Shooter7]

Thanks everyone...and yeah, was going to do all I could to be at the water chemistry meeting.

Mike, do you prefer Ushios over XM's? And how many/what color or T-5's did you run along with your MH? Same to you Lisa, how many/what color T-5's?

 

[Shooter7]

And what reflector setup are you using with these? Either links to the one(s) you have or pics of your setup would be much appreciated.

 

[dphins]

I ran 2 mh and 2 t-5's. I never used the 10k xm's so I can't comment on them. I used spider reflectors with the mhs.

 

[Shooter7]

So it wasn't like an all in one reflector or anything then? I just ask because I had this 3 foot parabolic reflector before that had spaces for MH moguls and VHO endcaps. I'm not finding much in the way of reflectors like that now, though.

 

[dphins]

The spiders worked good for me. I want to go with lumenarcs next time.

 

[Shooter7]

My problem with them...besides the price...is the amount of space they take up and trying to work in supplemental lighting around them. Even the minis are pretty good sized.

 

[dphins]

There isn't any wasted light with them though.

 

[DrBDC]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8299742#post8299742 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shooter7
And what reflector setup are you using with these? Either links to the one(s) you have or pics of your setup would be much appreciated.

The PFO parallel reflector is like that. They come in 24" or 36" lengths. I have a 36 right now but am going to either add 1 24 and overlap or just get 2 24's.

Here is an analysis of them and the lumenarcs:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/feature.htm

 

[Shooter7]

Yeah, that's the one I had before. Trouble is, I only have about 47 inches of working room inside my canopy and PA says these are 24 inches long each, so I'd have to overlap at least an inch. What I'm wondering then is what would happen if I wanted to add T-5 or VHO? I know they have holes at the ends of the reflector that matches up with the bases of endcaps, but with the overlap you're now messing with the overall length. So would you have to do something like a 36 inch flourescent lamp and drill your own holes for the endcap placement?