My first bleaching coral..

[sh0tyme83]

Well as the title says, I am dealing with my first coral that decided to bleach. What would cause this? I thought it was lights, but the coral came from a 400 watt MH system and got placed in my 150 watt system. What else would cause this? The other two that I bought from the same tank are fine.

 

[sh0tyme83]

Oh also, can a bleached coral come back?

 

[madamo]

What type of coral is it? Did you acclimate to both water parameters and lighting?

 

[sh0tyme83]

montipora - acclimated water and it is light acclimating now by being in the sand bed.

 

[sh0tyme83]

i just got these yesterday by the way.

 

[JNye]

what is the source of these corals?, sounds like stress from shipping, bad acclimation, prolly not anything with your tank, i think they can come back but it can take awhile.

 

[-=Efrain=-]

In the sand bed or on the sand bed? Corals that landed in my sand bed tend to start to bleach after awhile. Also stress and too high of temp can cause bleaching. If you feel tht the coral will not make it you can frag it.

 

[sh0tyme83]

i got them from Advanced Aquatics and they are on those green frag plugs they have. My temp is at 79, that couldn't possibly too high, could it?

 

[-=Efrain=-]

79 is a good temp.. Well it could be stress like stated above.
just keep an eye on it and if it keeps bleaching I would frag it.

 

[chin]

Did it get really cold on the ride home? If it keeps bleaching, I would frag it as well. Adding some lugols to the tank wouldnt hurt either

 

[hebygb]

I have a Birds nest that is on a plug... I was trying it out in different areas for lighting etc... because of this, it ended up getting knocked down by my snails... several times. This created the stress that caused several limbs to bleach... it is starting to come back now that it has been sitting with plug buried in the sand.... but very slowly.

 

[sh0tyme83]

no it didn't get really cold. It took me 30 minutes to get home and then went right into floating the bag in the tank. Let it float for 20 minutes before acclimating water. Here is something more that is interesting that leads me to believe it is lighting. All during the time my Metal Halide was on, it was bleaching, as soon as the Halide turned off and the artinic PCs were on, it kinda stopped, meaning, I couldn't see anymore of it's tissues falling off and it didn't get any worse. How do you acclimate your SPS to your lights? I thought placing them in the sand bed on the plug would be good enough.

 

[sutec13]

Even though you went from a 400MH to 150MH, your lighting may be more intense. I have 2- 150 MH in a 29 BC and it toasts the heck out of corals from 400 MH tanks because my lights are 5 inches off the water. I've learned to always start them on the bottom/side and start moving them up after a week or so.

 

[jgleach]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11683890#post11683890 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sh0tyme83
All during the time my Metal Halide was on, it was bleaching, as soon as the Halide turned off and the artinic PCs were on, it kinda stopped, meaning, I couldn't see anymore of it's tissues falling off and it didn't get any worse.

Bleaching is one thing, but it sounds like you are describing Rapid Tissue Necrosis...RTN.

 

[sh0tyme83]

How can you tell the difference between bleaching and RTN? I thought corals shed their zooxantheallae when they bleach and that is what causes the loss of color.

 

[Rod Buehler]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11707330#post11707330 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sh0tyme83
How can you tell the difference between bleaching and RTN? I thought corals shed their zooxantheallae when they bleach and that is what causes the loss of color.

Yes, bleaching is when the epell zooxanthallae, not tissue. Zooxanthallae is an algae that lives within the tissue. When it is expelled, the tissue remains intact but it looses color and therefore called bleaching

You are describing tissue loss which is much worse than bleaching. Corals usually will recover from bleaching. but rarely from tissue loss (depending on what may be causing the tissue loss and how fact...)