Bleached Porites

[Mr31415]

I have a porites rock with christmas worms. A couple of days ago it started to bleach - but it only bleached on the portions facing directly upwards, to the light. The vertical sides have not bleached at all.

My question is, obviously this seems to be bleaching caused by intense lighting and not the TWallace - elevated Magnesium thing I did... Otherwise the whole porites would have been bleached the same, not so?

Second question - what is the minimum, maximum and average duration from the time you increase your lighting until a coral such as porites would start to bleach?

 

[BrokeColoReefer]

Are the porites a new addition? have you done anything recently to improve water clarity? Have you changed bulbs recently?
The points behind my questions:
If the porites are new, its possible that they arent aclimated to the light

If you have recently added ozone or carbon, that can clear the water enough that could call for a second aclimation

If you change bulbs, the new bulbs will be more intense then the old ones, or if you change spectrum that can stress corals as well..

When i add corals to my tank, i put egg crate with black netting on top for a week, week two i take of the net, week three i take off the eggcrate. All corals start at the bottom of the tank througout the aclimation process. After the process is over i move the corals up in the tank slowly. Of course i dont do this with every frag i get, but any colony or any piece that i dont want to stress thats how i do it.

HTH

 

[Mr31415]

Porites is more than 1 year in my tank - never had any kind of trouble. I changed my light pendant to MH about 2 months ago. That is why I asked - how long can a bleach event take to occur.

No recent additions of anything like ozone or GAC.

 

[dendro982]

Just wanted to ask you: can you post pictures (old or/and current) and provide some information on keeping Christmas tree worms?

I have them too, and would like to know, how the other keepers are working with them.

About bleaching: don't know about light-caused, but it shouldn't be elevated magnesium - I recently finished the course of bryopsis treatment, with 1600ppm Mg, in tank with 3 different porites (Christmas tree rocks), no problem.

But the brown kind with large worms' crowns recovered well after toxic (I suspect so) bleaching, while other sps died in the tank crash.

In 2.5 months.
Bleached in 2-3 days, but it was totally different situation.

Will hope, that your will recover soon too.