Corals seem lighter in colour after tank crash 5 days ago.

Jonathan lee

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Hey guys, i had a tank crash last week because of a failed return pump. Whole tank went cloudy and i lost some corals, fish and inverts. The one coral that didnt make it was my whole colony of anthelia. 8x6 inch colony disintegrated into a smelly mush on the 3rd day of the crash. I only got it under control after the 3rd day. What i realised was that in the first day of the crash, my corals were really really stressed. Torches receding, not a single polyp on my gsp open, neon green hairy mushroom split, red neon hairy mushroom shrivelled up looking almost dead, hammer borderline dead, discos shrivelled but didnt look as bad as the other mushrooms. But second day after the crash, some of the gsp had opened up and i realised along with both types of hairy mushrooms, they look paler. Like significantly paler. I thought maybe the stress caused this and that it would become normal again after i get it under control(which i did the next day around midnight) so i didn’t really think about it. But now 5 days later and no improvements im starting to worry. Do gsp and mushrooms bleach? My torches didnt lose any colour but theyre not extending as usual and looks like im gonna lose a head of my neon torch. Water tests done and ammonia is 0, nitrite 0 and nitrate 0. My nitrate has been pretty much zero for a year now after using seachems denitrate media. Nothing had changed in the tank for months and my corals were all fine and my torches were even splitting before the crash. Not sure if you can tell from the pic but my gsp is normal bright neon green and has those purple hints in the centre. Now they look pale yellowish green no purple at all.... the other pic is reference for what they normally look like.. theres a huge difference. What is happening? Should i just give it time and see?

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reef lover

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Dont know how long they went without water movement but it def caused some stress and probably loss of zooanthelane. I would give them some time .
 

MixedFruitBasket

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Yeah. Lighter color usually means they blew their zooxanthellae. As long as they didn’t lose their antifungal/ bacterial coating they could recover as long as they didn’t blow all of it.
 
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