Corals turning white?

[atraperegrinus]

I've noticed since mt last water change Alot of my corals, including 2 of my zoa plugs have lost alot of color.

usually my softies are a dark pink, or tan color, almost dark purple, they are all very light pinks, and the finger and toadstool leathers are very white.

my purple yuma i had is also very white. few other frags have no changes.

Only thing is for some odd reason after months of battling high nitrates, out of the blue here this past water change, my tank is now 100% spotless, very clear water. cleaner than i have seen it since day one.

but even my rock has gone white in spots.

I thought maybe because it went from being murky, to all of a sudden pristine clear? everything just got bleached out from the lights?

8.0 ph, alk 8.2, 1.025 salinity, 0 nitrate ( api nitrate kit so i know theres some just not enough for api kit to register )

i'll check ammonia and nitrite shortly, but i'm assuming they are good since none of the crabs or fish are having any issues.

anyone have any ideas?

I dont have my ca and mg in line yet, my tank is 95% softies so ive been holding off on dosing until i absolutely NEED to, just regular weekly 20%+ water changes.

anything i should look for? should i go buy some carbon? could it be toxin related?

 

[DubiousMaximus]

The probability they bleached, going hazy to clear lite tank, is most likely the case. Put the lights back throuh your acclimatization cycle.

 

[atraperegrinus]

The probability they bleached, going hazy to clear lite tank, is most likely the case. Put the lights back throuh your acclimatization cycle.

yeah i have them turned down to the lowest settings, i figured this is what it is, i just got scared it might be something else.

ive had between 25-40 nitrates for about 4 months, along with quite a bit of a few different kinds of algae break outs. After this last water change and clean up the algae is literally all but gone, the water is so clear its crazy.

im at about month 8? I think since i moved it from the old owners house who ran it as a fowlr, and upgraded it to be a mostly softy and leather coral reef tank.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

For water changes I would recommend that you drop that from 20%+ per week to 10% every two weeks. Now that you have the nitrates down you no longer need to do that big of a wc.

As far as dosing goes, if all you are going to have is softies a 10% wc every two weeks will be more than enough to sustain them with the proper water nutrients. There is no need to dose anything.

Can you give us a few pictures of what your tank looks like now? It would be helpful in figuring out the white issue you are having. But it could be as DubiousMaximus said and be a tad bleached because they are now getting full light. Which brings up my last question,, what kind of lights do you have? You don't need very strong lighting for softies and zoas like is needed for SPS.

 

[atraperegrinus]

For water changes I would recommend that you drop that from 20%+ per week to 10% every two weeks. Now that you have the nitrates down you no longer need to do that big of a wc.

As far as dosing goes, if all you are going to have is softies a 10% wc every two weeks will be more than enough to sustain them with the proper water nutrients. There is no need to dose anything.

Can you give us a few pictures of what your tank looks like now? It would be helpful in figuring out the white issue you are having. But it could be as DubiousMaximus said and be a tad bleached because they are now getting full light. Which brings up my last question,, what kind of lights do you have? You don't need very strong lighting for softies and zoas like is needed for SPS.

yeah i was doing 20ep the nitrates% weekly to ke ~ 15%, now that it was a nice yellow 0 on the api scale, i'll tone it down.

everything right now seems very happy and is all perked back up expanded well, still white and less colorful though.

these are links to the full 16 megapixel shots.

this is a FTS from about 6 hours ago. whites on
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70013956/2015-10-25 14.52.11.jpg

somewhat hard to see, but the leathers are very white, and the digi in the center is almost a pink instead of its usual very bright dark deep red.


and these are from just a few minutes ago blues only now. sorry for that

like i said everything is open and puffed up big and has polyps out, just much less vibrantly colored. so i assumed lights too bright with the cleared up water.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70013956/2015-10-25 18.56.33.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70013956/2015-10-25 18.56.53.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70013956/2015-10-25 18.57.04.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70013956/2015-10-25 18.57.07.jpg

this is a 55g petco tank, which is my excuse for the poor rock scape lol.

thanks for your time guys!

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I would love to have a Duncan with those long stems. Tank Looks Great!

 

[atraperegrinus]

I would love to have a Duncan with those long stems. Tank Looks Great!

thanks, yeah i got them from a local as a trade for a t5ho unit. i was surprised, i thought he was gonna cut a head or two off, and he threw the whole thing in the bag. My candy cane coral is the same way, but 14 heads.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

That's sweet! Those long shaft ones are hard to come by.

 

[atraperegrinus]

just an update, since i posted this i turned my lights way down, they are still bleached, but the color is coming back very slowly.

how long should it take for them to get back to where they were color wise?