Birdnest Coral Dying?

[echopiece]

My green birdnest is a little over a year old now and it is getting quite large. I've recently noticed the bottom branches are dying and looked bleached. Is this due to the lack of light reaching this part of the coral (mainly the base)? As you can see it still looks fine from the top down view. Is this normal, and I should I not worry? And yes, I am battling GHA at the moment.

 

[echopiece]

Bump

 

[PaleHorse]

Looks normal as that is the shaded area. That growth pattern looks cool.

 

[echopiece]

Ok thanks, I kind of figured the same.

 

[ca1ore]

Piggybacking .... hope that's OK ....

I have a similar problem with mine actually, It is slightly larger than a softball, and while the tips are that nice neon green, most of the center is bleached (can see the polyps, but they are white).



I'm not really sure what the problem is. Typically its been either lack of light or lack of flow, but both seem unlikely here.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[rovster]

I think this is typical of large birdsnests. The base gets either shaded or flow gets blocked out and you see die off at the base. As long as the tips look healthy, I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[echopiece]

Piggybacking .... hope that's OK ....

I have a similar problem with mine actually, It is slightly larger than a softball, and while the tips are that nice neon green, most of the center is bleached (can see the polyps, but they are white).

I'm not really sure what the problem is. Typically its been either lack of light or lack of flow, but both seem unlikely here.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Very interesting ca1ore, your bleaching appears to be more severe. Maybe we need to install mirrors beneath our birdsnests lol

 

[Amphiprion]

I think this is typical of large birdsnests. The base gets either shaded or flow gets blocked out and you see die off at the base. As long as the tips look healthy, I wouldn't worry too much.

Pretty typical of just about any large, denser colonies, IME. The one pictured seems to have quite a few branches that eventually anastomosed near the base and completely blocked out light. That is in contrast with the first, where the branches are still comparatively discrete. Unless it somehow spreads to upper portions, this is pretty normal and natural progression.

I had an extremely dense colony of Pocillopora that had a completely dead base. The underside was largely dead as well, seeing as how it had a couple of inches of solid skeleton above it completely blocking light.

 

[Mael]

I have also seen this happen a lot with Poci, and a few other large sps colonies, had part od a red planet that was gone because it never got light, the rest was perfect.

I would only worry if the bleaching accelrates or starts showing up in other places besides the base.

 

[lars65inc]

Same thing happened to me. It started as a small portion and moved out to the tips. THen spread to more and more. over a period of a week half of my softball sized BN was bleached.

I ended up removing the entire colony and saving whatever i could. Hopefully something survives.

Eric

 

[Kaman8]

I am having the same problem like you . The base has turned white but I see the tips are growing.