Odd Bleaching Pattern

[jml1149]

Good Morning-

Last night, I checked into my tank and found this:

The burnt tip is from an alk spike while dialing in my kalk reactor a couple months ago. The front of that tip has completely healed over.

What's odd is the white pattern of what I think is bleaching on the underside of the coral. You can still see the brown polyp in the middle of the white patch, so I don't think it's STN. These areas are somewhat "shaded" by the rest of the coral and mostly due to its position and location of lights. You can see where the areas receiving full light look great, just these odd white areas have me concerned.

PE is great and the blue tips show recent growth patterns. Just concerns me that the white spots on the back popped up.

Is this normal? Just measured last night:

Salinity: 1.025
Alk: 8.1
Ca: 420
Mg: 1340
NO3: 10ppm
Phos: 0


Thanks for any advice, new to SPS so this is all very new and exciting to me.

 

[bif24701]

Good Morning-

Last night, I checked into my tank and found this:

The burnt tip is from an alk spike while dialing in my kalk reactor a couple months ago. The front of that tip has completely healed over.

What's odd is the white pattern of what I think is bleaching on the underside of the coral. You can still see the brown polyp in the middle of the white patch, so I don't think it's STN. These areas are somewhat "shaded" by the rest of the coral and mostly due to its position and location of lights. You can see where the areas receiving full light look great, just these odd white areas have me concerned.

PE is great and the blue tips show recent growth patterns. Just concerns me that the white spots on the back popped up.

Is this normal? Just measured last night:

Salinity: 1.025
Alk: 8.1
Ca: 420
Mg: 1340
NO3: 10ppm
Phos: 0


Thanks for any advice, new to SPS so this is all very new and exciting to me.

You should check for pests. If you can remove it and look close up. Or put it in a tub of tank water and try to blast off anything that might be on the skin.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jml1149]

Thanks for the advice, will try when I get home. I've been looking into this online, and most pests I've read about leave bite marks or some other sort of indication, correct? This happened fairly quickly, within a two days or so. I don't see any obvious bite marks or change in color other than the affected areas.

Also, the delineation between white and brown is very sharp. In most pictures I've seen there's usually a "raggedness" to the edges where the chowing is occurring.

Does this look like a sign of any specific pest?

 

[jml1149]

Is it possible this is damage from a hermit crab? I have one blue leg left in the tank, and I have no qualms about rehoming him into the sump with the rest of his coral eating buddies.

 

[bif24701]

Is it possible this is damage from a hermit crab? I have one blue leg left in the tank, and I have no qualms about rehoming him into the sump with the rest of his coral eating buddies.

Possible, absolutely. Do you at least dip all your corals?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[2wheelsonly]

Based on my experiences, that looks 100% like mine look about 2-3 weeks before they die. In 4 years of keeping SPS I have yet to have one live after showing signs of flesh loss. That does not look like bleaching to me.

I think total death is imminent; hopefully I am wrong.

 

[Scorpius]

Based on my experiences, that looks 100% like mine look about 2-3 weeks before they die. In 4 years of keeping SPS I have yet to have one live after showing signs of flesh loss. That does not look like bleaching to me.

I think total death is imminent; hopefully I am wrong.

I'm seen and had worse recover. Stop spreading your negativity because you're tank is having problems. Lets keep things positive here.

 

[Pife]

I'm going through this with several corals. Some have lived some haven't. Did you just change your gfo? Did your nutrients bottom of? Have you or are you dosing anything? Salinity saying by chance?

 

[jml1149]

I pulled it out, dipped it, fragged it best I could, dipped the frags, and back into the tank they went. No bugs, worms, crabs etc fell off in tub. So likely parameter related.

Thinking about it, I wonder how accurate my two year old refractometer is? Along with the two year old calibration solution? Maybe it's the root cause?

 

[jml1149]

I run NoPox, which is sufficient for my phosphate requirements. I did just get a huge diatom bloom, is it possible the corals are responding to an uptick in silica? I missed changing my DI filter and this is what happens.