Possible to starve SPS with high nitrates/phosphates?

xenon

xenon

Owner of Canada Corals
I am quite puzzled by the bleaching of my SPS lately.

I have 25 clownfish and 3 tangs in a 75g tank so my bioload is not exactly low. I feed noori and pellet daily. I also feed rottifeast, oysterfeast and phytofeast 2x per week.

PO4: 0.10 (hanna checker)
NO3: 5 (salifert)

I am running GFH (Fauna Marin UltraPhos) and I was dosing a few drops of Fauna Marin UltraBak but have since discontinued use since it did nothing to lower my nitrates.

How is it even possible that my corals are lightening in color? :eek1:

I run the Fauna Marin balling method with triple doser so my cal/alk/mag are always rock solid. I auto-top-off so my salinity never moves either. I also have a chiller that maintains 77F temps and do 10% water changes weekly with Tropic Marin Pro Reef salt.
 
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Two much light and or to low of nutrients are generally the reasoning for them bleaching. It's not always the case but a place to start
What are all of your levels.
I know you said that you have 2 radions over a 55 running 100% and many of us said that might be the problem, have you looked into it anymore?
 
Are we talking bleaching/paling or tissue loss ?

If its indeed bleaching, which doesnt seem likely but maybe, best guess would be too strong of light to fast or maybe temp problems.
 
fishyguy7 said:
Two much light and or to low of nutrients are generally the reasoning for them bleaching. It's not always the case but a place to start
What are all of your levels.
I know you said that you have 2 radions over a 55 running 100% and many of us said that might be the problem, have you looked into it anymore?
Click to expand...

I currently have two Radions running 100% brightness @ 20K preset. I know its not the light because its been running at that level for months with no issues. Also, I have SPS at the very bottom that are acting the same as the corals at the top.

Grant W said:
What are the big three at, Alk, Ca, mag.
Click to expand...

Alk: 8.5
Cal: 450
Mag: 1350

dvanacker said:
Are we talking bleaching/paling or tissue loss ?

If its indeed bleaching, which doesnt seem likely but maybe, best guess would be too strong of light to fast or maybe temp problems.
Click to expand...

We are talking paling so I guess that may be tissue loss.

It's not temps because I have my heater plugged into my chiller so it controls the temps and its always 77F.
 
dvanacker said:
Tissue loss (ie. Rtn/stn) is different than bleaching/paling.
Click to expand...

The corals are paling/bleaching.

I am just asking if its even possible for corals to bleach out when there are phosphates/nitrates present in the water.

Other than PO4/NO3 my parameters are solid and in check.
 
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Its possible if they are not properly acclimated to strong light.....most acros can take a ton of light but if you take a brown acro from very little light and then put a crap ton of light on it than bleaching will occur. Most people with MH and T5 have to be careful of bulb changes even.
 
dvanacker said:
Its possible if they are not properly acclimated to strong light.....most acros can take a ton of light but if you take a brown acro from very little light and then put a crap ton of light on it than bleaching will occur. Most people with MH and T5 have to be careful of bulb changes even.
Click to expand...

This is not a lightning issue. These same corals have been perfectly fine under these lights for many months at the current settings.

I will repeat my question:

Is it even possible for SPS to bleach out when there is PO4/NO3 present in the water with all other parameters in check?
 
Hey man....im just trying to answer your question.

It possible of course but there has to be a reason.....the usual reasons for bleaching are too low nutrient/not enough food, temp problems and poor acclimation to high lighting. None of these seem to be a problem for you so my only other guess than would be a contaminant.
 
Forget this guy, D ...

Not worth your time trying to educate on all possibilities/aspects when his closed mind is concerned with only one specific, uninformed question.

It probably is a "lightning" issue for him anyway, Darryl ... but good luck suggesting that as a possible/probable cause, since he dished out the $3K for them it definitely couldn't be a lighting issue ! As you know, many times switching to limited spectrum LEDs doesn't produce these negative results until the first few months in.
 
reefdoc, dont be so sensitive and take things so seriously.

With all the information I have gathered, it all points to lightning being the issue. Either that or my test kits are pooched.

I appreciate the help guys. :thumbsup:
 
Anyhow, nutrients are sky high for SPS.....

Phates should be less than 0.03 and trates less then 0.5!


You are thinking the exact opposite of why your corals are not looking great! Too much light? Really? That's just ignorant!
 
The nutrients are high but not sky high. Nitrate at 5ppm is not generally a problem for SPS...in fact some people like nitrates at 5ppm. Definitely over 10ppm is problem...but 5ppm I dont think so. As for the phosphate..... .1ppm is not good but it's not horrible. I let my GFO go and my tank reached .08ppm (on hanna) and the tank was pretty healthy....maybe just a tiny bit less colorful. Im sure if I let it go much longer it would have been a problem though.

Either way his tank is bordering too high nutrients so the bleaching is definitely not because of starving/too low nutrients.
 
It's not phosphate levels..........the higher the levels go it will allow algae to be an isssue, but certainly not at .10. Growth won't be affected unless you are running over .40-.50 for an extented period of time & still color won't be an issue.

The nitrates can cause some browning but not making the corals pale.

I'm going to say it's the lights also. When the acros start to lose color or go downhill it takes months. Unless you are taking pictures every few weeks you don't notice it, until the corals are in trouble.

Your spectrum is probably off & if you have the lights on too high certain acros will be affected. They all won't act the same because they have a wide variation of pigments & chromo proteins that will be affected differently.

Here's the general checklist these days for trouble shooting & if you scan trouble shooting threads they all follow this.

1. Pests AEFW or bugs
2. Water parameters.........this is a wider range than the actual target numbers & most times it's when they get too low.
3. Lighting & it's usually LED's

The worst part about the light problem is that people tend to chase other ghosts & make a ton of changes that cause instability in the tank to sress the acros even more.

If I had the problem I would dip a few of the affected acros to make certian of no pests, then I would turn down the intensity of the lights some. I'd focus more on lowering the white diodes.
 
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