Hawkins coral fading/bleaching?

[echopiece]

I just recently noticed my hawkins coral is losing its color only on the top half of the colony. It used to be a nice turquoise green color, but is now fading and looks very pale. The bottom half of the coral still seems to be holding its color. I did some reading and it appears this coral does not produce a slime coat and does not do well out of the water. It dawned on me that when I perform a water change, that portion of the coral is exposed to the air for about 10 mins or so. Could this be the reason?

 

[cleverbs]

Yes it could be, My LFS owner has a colony of hawkins that he will frag out for some of his customers. I got one from him and it bleached out and ended up RTNing I talked to him about it and he said no problem come in and Ill give you another frag. He went on to tell me how with hawkins about 1 out of every 3 frags they cut of it RTN's IMO its because when they frag them the frag is out of the water and they dont do so well out of the water. I also find they are VERY sensitive to high ALK levels. Mine looks the best when my alk is ~8 - 8.5 mine got up to 12dkh some how and it looked really bad, I then lowered my alk back to 8 and it colored right back up and looks good agian. Mine is turquoise with bright purple tips, Still a small frag...hawkins grow painfully slow.

 

[Tweaked]

Yep, and they don't do well with dips typically either. However, double strength bayer for 7 minutes was fine.. go figure.

 

[echopiece]

Yeah my parameters are stable, so I am guessing its the air exposure. From what I understand, these corals can tolerate a lot of light? When I upgrade tanks here soon I'll make sure to place it lower in the tank.

 

[cleverbs]

Yes they get the purple tips under really high light. Mine is at about 450~ par with MH

 

[Tweaked]

Also have mine at the highest point in my tank under 250w Radiums/T5s/ReefBrites!

 

[cleverbs]

Also have mine at the highest point in my tank under 250w Radiums/T5s/ReefBrites!

same 250w radium/t5s/ No reefbrites yet...one day maybe, the 72" reef brites are pricy lol

 

[Mr V]

in the ocean, "deep water" acros do not have chance expose to the air much.

 

[fishguy597]

I left mine on the Ora plug and it's the size of a baseball. I have taken mine out of the water to frag it a few times without any problems. The only time I had something similar to the op is when I had red bugs. You may want to check for pests.