Bleached Acropora

[Barro777]

I acquired the frag you see in the center of the picture 6 days ago from a guy who has a fairly good reputation and, presumably, knowledge and experience.

I have zero experience with SPS, so I let him pick a few easy beginner frags for me. When he was putting this Acro Valida in the bag he pointed out that it was bleached.

The only question I thought of asking him at the time was: "Why would it be bleached?" To which he said something about temperatures fluctuating because he had left a window open. Anyways, he didn't seem to be too concerned and that raised no alarm with me.

A week later, however, I do not see any improvement, and am getting concerned now. What is your opinion, is it a goner or have you seen frags like that come back after a few days? It has a little bit of coloration at the tips...

 

[triguy]

Can you get a closer picture? It's hard to tell, but it almost looks like there are AEFW bite marks. Have you seen any poly extension since you've had it?

 

[Barro777]

That should give a slightly better look. I haven't seen anything happening to it. This is precisely how it has been during the last six days.

 

[gojk]

Does it have just a few specs of color here and there? Does it look like tissue there but just skeleton everywhere else? Is that algae growing on the white parts?

That looks like it RTN/STN'ed. If they sold it to you that way, I would ask for my money back and never go back.

 

[triguy]

That picture is a bit better, and it looks like I can seen some polyps, so I would say it's not dead, but doesn't look good. It might take some time to color up, but I've had colonies in the past that looked dead and totally came back. Are the other frags you got from him doing good?

 

[Barro777]

Thanks, tri. I am going to wait and see. Somehow it doesn't look entirely dead to me either. Other frags I got from the same source sps-wise..

(1) German Blue Digitata, doing great, in my opinion, though not the color it should be, but very far from being white, kinda very dirty grey, has visible polyps everywhere. Tips are becoming a little whitish and are covered with tiny fuzzy hairs. I assumed it's attempting to grow. (2) Birds nest doing totally alright. (3) Monti Confusa is neither here nor there. Has one dead spot, but the rest of it is normal color. Hope it will pull through.