Montipora digitata bleaching

dr.dator

dr.dator

New member
I have a small green montipora digitata which is now white... It has gradually been getting whiter since I got it back in August. This is my only SPS and I had it placed pretty high in the tank. Could it be bleaching because of too intense lightning? I have a DIY LED from Rapid LED with 9 CREE XP-G cool white and 9 CREE XT-E royal blue running at around 80% intensity. Is that too much for a 30 gallon cube? All my LPS and softies which are basically on the sand are looking good.

Here's a picture of the poor guy
 

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Ok thanks, I think my params are pretty good. Here they are:

Temp: 79
Salinity: 1.026 (refractometer)
pH: 8 (salifert)
Ammonia: 0 (salifert)
Nitrite: 0 (salifert)
Nitrate: 0.5 ppm (salifert)
Phosphate: 0 (hanna checker)
Calcium: 440 ppm (salifert)
Alkalinity: 10 dKH (salifert)
Magnesium: 1340 ppm (salifert)

I have never had a problem with nitrates or phosphates. I only started measuring ca, alk and mg a few months ago but I have been keeping up with the water changes (10-20% weekly) and I'm using Tropic marin pro reef salt with RO/DI water.
 
Your lighting is too intense with the combination of high alk and low NO3/PO4. If you remove or reduce phosphate removing media and get alk down near 8 dkh. It will come back. You could reduce light. But if tge rest of your corals look good. I would leave that.
 
downbeach said:
Lighting could be a problem. Have you tried to relocate the coral, or lowering the lights intensity?
Click to expand...

I did relocate it to the sand bed and lowered the lights intensity slightly today. From reading some other threads on the forum I realized my lightning setup might be a bit overkill.

kevensquint said:
Your lighting is too intense with the combination of high alk and low NO3/PO4. If you remove or reduce phosphate removing media and get alk down near 8 dkh. It will come back. You could reduce light. But if tge rest of your corals look good. I would leave that.
Click to expand...

Ok cool, thanks for the info! I am running aluminum based phosphate remover in a reactor. And quite a lot of it... It helped me battle some cyano I had initially, and then I just continued using it. I will cut back on that to see if the coral improves.

I don't feed my corals much. Only some mysis occasionally for my euphyllia. And my only fish are two small ocellaris so my bioload is not very high. Do you guys think I should feed my montipora anything?
 
Keven is spot on, if you're running an ULNS alk should be around 7-8 and never above 9. Lighting could also be somewhat of an issue if it was not acclimated to the light properly. I would leave it on the sand bed for a little while, bring the alk to around 8dkh slowly (a big alk swing can be detrimental), and after the Digi has recovered and showing signs of improvement you can start raising it up in the tank. I don't believe it is to much light though for what you have, I think your alk being where it is at is the biggest factor.
 
In theory there is almost never too much light. But if you say combine strong light, high alk and very low NO3/PO4. IME , some corals will get pale. So a little NO3 and PO4 as well as lower Alk will change the game. Your same light will soon be just right, and in the future under the right conditions you will even be able to increase the intensity.
 
Hm... I thought you could never really run an ULNS without any form of carbon dosing? And also, I do have some small patches of algae here and there so I figured there must be some PO4 even though my hanna checker says 0.00. Right?

But I will definitely try lowering my alk and reducing PO4 remover. One thing tough that intrigues me is that my montipora was pale even before I started dosing carbonate to raise my alk. That was maybe two months ago and back then my alk was around 7 which I thought was on the low side and maybe causing the bleaching...
 
There is a definite difference between bleaching and pale. If you are not feeding the corals, dosing Amino Acids, or a combination of the sort with an ULNS it tends to lead to pale colors cause you are basically starving the coral. That is what I was experiencing until I started feeding more often and dosing Red Sea Reef Energy A/B.

One thing you need to be aware of though raising your nutrients will make you coral more sensitive to light possibly leading to tip burn, so watch for that as well.

Also, SPS crave stability, so make sure you go slow while lowering you alk to 8dkh. To much of an alk swing and you could have things like RTN happen.
 
I don't think op is running a ulns system. I would just lower it in the tank. It sounds like it is getting too much light. It can take months for sps to acclimate to their new environment. Generally speaking, very generally speaking, montipora don't need the intense lighting that acros do.
 
Ok, so here's an update on my current situation... I stopped using phosphate remover and started dosing Red Sea Reef Energy A and B (2 mls of each daily). I also added two more fish and I've been feeding more than before (mostly frozen mysis). And on top of that I haven't done any WC for over a month now.

The weird thing is that my Hanna Checker still reads 0.00 ppm phosphate. It has only been over 0.00 once and that was 0.03, and I've been testing pretty much every other day... My nitrate is now up to around 1 ppm though and I have started to get small patches of cyano again... :mad:

Could my checker be faulty? I feel like I should have some phosphates by now...

Anyway, I think my montipora is doing a little bit better actually. It's hard to tell but it looks like it's getting greener.
 
i wouldnt dose anything. you asking for trouble. your tank was stable before just a little to much light intensity. now that you removed phos media and started aa dosing you are seeing cyano, what does that tell you.

i would stop dosing and add some start up gfo again, just a little. if you want to feed a little target feed some reef chile once a week.
 
A lot of times people make too many changes at once when they encounter a problem with their tanks.

".....so I removed the carbon, and GFO, did a 20% water change, moved the coral up/down in the tank, added/removed lights, stopped dosing, started dosing....."

By chance if things did turn around, you would never really know what was wrong in the first place because you did too many things at once.

What lighting did this frag come from?

Did you have the LEDs on the tank when you got the frag?

Have you seen any calcification? If you got this in Aug and posted in Jan I would think the base of the frag plug would be covered if it liked your tank.

My recommendations:

move it down, wait a month.

if you're manually dosing ca/alk, get a couple of pumps

start a water change schedule and stick to it.....1g a week would be so easy to do if you mixed up a 5g bucket once every 5 weeks.

wait a month........

wait a month........
 
The weird thing is that my Hanna Checker still reads 0.00 ppm phosphate. It has only been over 0.00 once and that was 0.03, and I've been testing pretty much every other day... My nitrate is now up to around 1 ppm though and I have started to get small patches of cyano again...
Click to expand...

Check your lot # on the reagent packets. There is a known problem with lot#006 reading zero all the time. There is a good thread on it in the Hanna forum.

I agree with Laddy. Don't make too many changes at once otherwise you'll just miss what the acual cause was and may even make things worse. Go slow. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

HTHs
 
I too just had a basketball size colony of brown digi bleach, after growing from a pinkie size frag; only it, and nothing surrounding or touching it bleached. Interesting, could have been the result of some of my experiments, but can't figure why just the digi.

One experiment was adding alk by pouring baking soda directly into the sump, and raising alk by 5 or 10 points at a time.
 
One experiment was adding alk by pouring baking soda directly into the sump, and raising alk by 5 or 10 points at a time.[/QUOTE]


why would you do that?
 
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