Corals bleaching. Need help.

ktrandc

Premium Member
I've been dosing alkalinity and magnesium to bring the levels up in my tank. My corals started to bleach yesterday. I've done a 20% water change today. Is there anything else I can do? I've obviously stopped dosing. Thanks for your help.
 
I've been dosing alkalinity and magnesium to bring the levels up in my tank. My corals started to bleach yesterday. I've done a 20% water change today. Is there anything else I can do? I've obviously stopped dosing. Thanks for your help.
how much are you dosing? you can not raise either alk or mag fast you have to do it slowly, the bleaching is probly due to an alk swing
 
I thought I was going slow but I guess not slow enough. Will the corals recover on their own or can I do something to help.
 
That happened to me once. I stopped testing the water and alk went down to 7. I would test water often and adjust to correct levels slowly.
 
Currently I am testing daily Calcium, Alkalinity, and Magnesium daily to set up my protein skimmer. My Calcium is 400, my Alkalinity is 9.84 and my Magnsium is 1300. I had raised these levels from initial levels of Alkalinity of 8.9 and Magnesium of 1000. This was done through 3 days of dosing.
 
your dkh swing from 8.9 to 9.84 is not much in 3 days for your sps to stress. be very carefully on Mg dosing.
 
After a 20% water change today, my Alk is 10.08 and my Mg is back down to 1150. I think it was the magnesium dosing that caused the harm to the corals. Should I do another water change tomorrow?
 
And what about the parts of the corals that have already bleached? Should I cut those parts off so it will stop bleaching or will it not matter?
 
Your mag now is too low. Stop doing water change and raise up the calcium level to 430 since your is 400 to balance with your alk
 
is there something else you did ?
I don't see how bring up mg can cause corals to bleach. Also, if you alky goes up too fast, most of time you'll have burn tip instead of bleaching coral. I would check your niturient level, maybe it's too low. Did you do something with the lighting period? skimmer? carbon?

also most importantly which i'm suprise no one mention about it, if your corals bleach is cause by change of parameter, which means you stressed it already, a large water change would just stress it more cuz you are changing your parameter "again" .
 
You need to be absolutely sure that the measurements your making is correct. Test kits can be wrong or you maybe be doing the tests wrong, they're not always straight forward. You should cross check your values with different brand of test kits or test someone else's water, preferable someone who's got stable parameters.

For all you know, your mag could be 1400 but your testing 1000. or your alk could be 15+ but your testing 10. I don't think a jump in mag between 1000 to 1300 would harm anything, so something is not right. But also, stable levels of alk should be 8-9 max, higher you go, the higher the risk. HTH, good luck.
 
You need to be absolutely sure that the measurements your making is correct. Test kits can be wrong or you maybe be doing the tests wrong, they're not always straight forward. You should cross check your values with different brand of test kits or test someone else's water, preferable someone who's got stable parameters.

For all you know, your mag could be 1400 but your testing 1000. or your alk could be 15+ but your testing 10. I don't think a jump in mag between 1000 to 1300 would harm anything, so something is not right. But also, stable levels of alk should be 8-9 max, higher you go, the higher the risk. HTH, good luck.

Really good advice. Several years ago my alk was so low I lost 2 Millie colonies and all my sps browned out--my test kit was way off (salifert). I test regularly and use other brands.
 
btw, it won't even hurt even if your mg is 1400+, in fact, i know some people keep their mg high to kill off algae
 
I saw his tank and some of his corals are not just bleached...it was losing a lot of tissue. you should post some pictures of the birdsnest coral mike.
 
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