Do I have enough light over my tank? Corals (even softies) have lost color.

[cab395]

So, I just remembered something that I forgot to mention and could be important. My refractometer was off by 0.002 points of SG, so my reef was being kept at 1.023 instead of 1.025. It was like this for most likely a few weeks before I realized it. Could this have an effect on coral coloration?

 

[rtparty]

IMO, doubtful. I've kept reefs from 1.021 to 1.027 at times before I realized it.

Now the change, if it was too fast, could cause some issues.

 

[cab395]

I've just been researching different causes of bleaching. Does anyone know how large a temp swing causes bleaching? Will a 2-3 degree difference throughout the day contribute to it or does it have to be more of a swing?

 

[cab395]

Also, It is worth noting that there is xenia in the tank that are doing well, so I doubt I have too few nutrients. Sorry for the multiple posts, as I'm just trying to brain storm and narrow it down. I think it's either PO4 or too much lighting right now. I will be testing my PO4 when I get home in a few hours.

 

[Wrench]

No such thing as too much light. How frequent are your water changes? What kind of salt are you using? What is the source of your water? Are you sure of your pH? Is it fluctuating throughout the day?

I've screwed up a lot of things in my system over the years. Specific events which come to mind and resulted in similar symptoms to yours were:
- High salinity. Uncalibrated refractometer read 1.025 but it was really 1.032.
- Chronic low pH. I used to struggle with pH in the 7.8-7.9 range. Once I bumped it up to 8.3-8.4 the growth exploded.
- High PO4. As mentioned previously. I keep it between .03-.05.
- Conversely, I had problems with a nutrient poor system. NO3 and PO4 were literally zero and the corals were starving. I maintain 5-10ppm NO3 and PO4 around .03-.05 and the corals are much happier.
- Fluctuating Alk. Once I got it stabilized things really took off. I also had problems when it was too high or low. 8-9dKH seems to be the sweet spot for my system.
- Leather corals. I had one that I allowed to slime up while doing some tank maintenance. This bleached most of my SPS and it took a painfully long time for everything to come back. Now I am very careful not to disturb them.

The BEST things I ever did for my SPS color and growth-
- Don't allow detritus to build up anywhere. I vacuum the sump when I do a water change. Also vacuum the gravel in small sections every couple of weeks. I also use filter socks and change them every 2-3 days. These things prevent the crud from accumulating in the system.
- Have a healthy population of fish and feed them. Calfo was at my house once when my SPS were suffereing. He told me to add more fish and feed them. So I did, and things turned around quickly.
- Soda ash in my top-off water. This got my pH up in the 8.4 area and adds a bit of Alk.
- "Set it and FORGET IT!" Mount your corals and don't touch them. Let them adjust to their environment. Also, keeping your hands out of the system minimizes the chances for contamination from anything on your hands.
- REGULAR WATER CHANGES. It sounds simple and even cliche but it's the truth. I do about 10% per week. If I skip a week or two I can literally see the colors go away and growth slows. Bad stuff out, good stuff in.

 

[rtparty]

No such thing as too much light.

The rest of your post was quite good but this is an outright lie and could lead people down a very dangerous road.

 

[Wrench]

The rest of your post was quite good but this is an outright lie and could lead people down a very dangerous road.

There's certainly incorrect lighting and insufficient lighting, but it's my opinion that we cannot possibly provide too much light in our glass boxes. The key is to balance the amount of light with the amount of nutrients. Once again, my opinon based on personal observation. Take planted FW tanks for example. I once had a tank lit by power compacts and had pretty good growth. I replaced the PC's with a pair of halide bulbs. The plants immediately went south until I increased the amount of CO2 and fertilizers (nutrients). Corals behave very similarly. Obviously this is my opinion so take it as you will, but I refuse to jump on the bandwagon and suggest that the OP is providing too much light to his corals. I've gotten plenty of corals from under-lit tanks and put them right into my system under 600-800 PAR with no ill effects.

There are too many aspects of his husbandry that he hasn't told us about so it's tough to hand out advice without all the information. His solution could be as simple as more frequent water changes or he could have red bugs.

 

[rtparty]

With little to no SPS, red bugs are a very far stretch.

Photoinhibition and photosaturation are very real and there are plenty of well researched and well documented articles to show that. We will never be able to provide the food to our corals that is available to them in the wild. Sure we can pollute our water easily but we can't feed a ton and then have pristine water conditions a minute later like the ocean.

 

[cab395]

No such thing as too much light. How frequent are your water changes? What kind of salt are you using? What is the source of your water? Are you sure of your pH? Is it fluctuating throughout the day?

I've screwed up a lot of things in my system over the years. Specific events which come to mind and resulted in similar symptoms to yours were:
- High salinity. Uncalibrated refractometer read 1.025 but it was really 1.032.
- Chronic low pH. I used to struggle with pH in the 7.8-7.9 range. Once I bumped it up to 8.3-8.4 the growth exploded.
- High PO4. As mentioned previously. I keep it between .03-.05.
- Conversely, I had problems with a nutrient poor system. NO3 and PO4 were literally zero and the corals were starving. I maintain 5-10ppm NO3 and PO4 around .03-.05 and the corals are much happier.
- Fluctuating Alk. Once I got it stabilized things really took off. I also had problems when it was too high or low. 8-9dKH seems to be the sweet spot for my system.
- Leather corals. I had one that I allowed to slime up while doing some tank maintenance. This bleached most of my SPS and it took a painfully long time for everything to come back. Now I am very careful not to disturb them.

Okay, so I'm late for work so I have to make this short but I will expand on it later. My salinity was low, not high, but is now 1.025. My pH is 8.1 to 8.2 depending what time of the day I measure. JUST TESTED PO4 AND GOT A READING OF 0 ppm. So, my phosphates are NOT high, which was a likely culprit until this point. Maybe with 0 nitrates and 0 phosphate they are in fact starving? I'm not sure, what do you guys think? My all is steady around 8.3 dKH. I DO have a leather upstream of them that hasn't been looking so hot lately, so maybe this is my culprit? The leather was doing well for awhile then has kind of been looking just okay lately. I do run carbon and GFO though, so this should slow or halt the small (maybe 2" across) leather's toxins right?

Also, the two zoo colonies (sunny d's and fire and ice) right underneath of the zoo are the only two pieces I don't think lost any color. They are shaded though. Maybe this points to too much light being my culprit?

I do a 4 gallon water change every week using Reef Crystals salt. Source of my water is RO/DI unit which reads at 0 total dissolved solids before being mixed with the Reef Crystals. I'm perplexed.

Again, sorry for being short but I need to go to work. Please let me know what you all think! Thanks again for all the help everyone, I know we can get to the bottom of this!

In short, we might have narrowed it down to a few things:

1) Maybe too much light?
2) Maybe not enough nutrients in the tank? (I hesitate to say this since there is some algae growth (easily controllable), and my xenia are doing fine and growing.
3) Maybe the leather? (but I don't think so since the zoos underneath it look good and are probably growing best out of all my corals)
4) Maybe from my SG being low? (1.023... but wouldn't all corals be effected, even the zoos under the leather?)
5) Any other ideas?

This is really mind boggling. I did have a friend over last night who said that my FS looked darker than it did last week. Again, that is just subjective evidence that it has darkened up, so I cannot be sure. I took a picture of it last night for reference. I will also upload pics later of some of the corals before and after this fading. Again, please let me know what you think. Any and all ideas will be considered!

 

[cab395]

Can anyone recommend a plan of action based off of the information provided here? Is it time for me to just sit and wait to see if my lowered light schedule has things improve or get worse?

 

[cab395]

Wow, maybe it is my leather. I bumped it doing a water change A week or two ago and ever since it hasn't looked good. Specifically, over the past few days it has really declined in health. It looks like it's not going to make it. Maybe it has really pumping toxins into the water?

 

[Fish Brain]

I read this thread and your other thread. And what you have are bleached corals. Low Nutrients are not much of an issue with LPS they could care less. I've had high nutrients and low nutrients and my LPS just do their thing (no changes in my hammer or chalice corals). SPS have issues with nutrients, too much and they brown, zero/low and they lose color. There is a balance that needs to be found.

There IS such a thing as too much light. Too much too soon is a bad thing. Corals are sensitive to changes in light and what you had was a big change in light. Going from stock bulbs to ATI bulbs is like replacing a 40W light bulb with a 100W light bulb. And at 12 hours, too much too soon.

I have a 40B with a 4 bulb fixture. When I moved my coral from my 120 (AI Vegas) to the 40 (4 bulb Current Sundial) they bleached. I had two blue+ and two coral+. I was only running the blues for 8 hours and the coral+ for 3 hours and I bleached my chalice and war coral. I swapped out one blue+ and one coral+ with two pure actinic and everything is much happier. Even with only one blue+ and one coral+, I have SPS frags on the bottom of the tank coloring up. I'm slowly increasing the photo period one hour per week.

Even if you are replacing old ATI bulbs with new ATI bulbs, the intensity & spectrum change over time. Using screens on top of the tank or decreasing the photo period is recommended with a bulb change.

Corals can bleach/brown in a matter of days, but it can take weeks to months for some corals to color up and some corals (sps) can take months to almost a year to come back.

 

[stancfii]

+1 I had a hammer that looked just like your frogspawn. It was under a 250w mh on a 56g tank. When I moved it to the side of the tank, the color slowly came back, and growth took off. Raise your lights a few inches and cut the gfo by half. If you can't raise the light, drop the photoperiod to 4-5hrs a day for a couple weeks and see what happens. 4 ATI bulbs on that shallow of a tank is a lot light for lps/zoas. A previous TOTM winner, Mammothreefer, ran the lights on his 65g SPS tank for only 5-6hrs a day if that gives you some perspective.

 

[cab395]

Oh, wow. I bet it really is too much light. I pulled my GFO totally and have been feeding heavier. Should I decrease my photoperiod even more for a few weeks? It's currently 10 hours blue+ and 5 hours coral+. Should I bring the blue+ to 6 hours and the coral+ for 4 or 5 hours?

Too much light really does sound like the problem at this point.

 

[cab395]

I dropped my photoperiod to 6 hours Blue+ 4 hours coral+. I will leave it like this for one month to see if there is any improvement. Thanks again, all!