Acro in tank is 5 days old and bleaching bad?

[One Reefing Boi]

I got some new Acros from an online vendor and they arrived happy and healthy. Within 3 days one of them fully bleached (tbh it was a little ehh looking when I got it) and the other one I got is bleaching at the base after about 5-6 days (see pic below)

anyone have any ideas? Testing water when I get back from the store and will provide more info. The only thing I can’t test right now is PAR (BRS rental coming Friday).
What info would you need from me to help me out? Thanks!

 

[reefwiser]

This time of year temperature during shipping is an issue. The change from the online vendor to your tank. The par where they where placed in the tank.
SPS are not easy they will die if you look at them wrong. To be a SPS keeper is not for someone who gets discouraged easy.
Stable Stable Stable water. The large the water volume to better with SPS.

 

[Dilan Patel]

Did you dip the smooth skin acro? If so which one. Smooth skins do not do well being dipped.

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Did you dip the smooth skin acro? If so which one. Smooth skins do not do well being dipped.

Did like a 3-5min dip in CoralRx

all my Coral gets that dip though and tons of worms and pests came off of it

 

[One Reefing Boi]

This time of year temperature during shipping is an issue. The change from the online vendor to your tank. The par where they where placed in the tank.
SPS are not easy they will die if you look at them wrong. To be a SPS keeper is not for someone who gets discouraged easy.
Stable Stable Stable water. The large the water volume to better with SPS.

Yeah I heard SPS are like that — it’s a 50gal system and it’s about 3mo old (still young I know) but all my other corals are happy as can be. It stinks to lose them but I understand it’s part of the learning process and inevitable.
Working on getting params now

 

[landlubber]

Yeah I heard SPS are like that — it’s a 50gal system and it’s about 3mo old (still young I know) but all my other corals are happy as can be. It stinks to lose them but I understand it’s part of the learning process and inevitable.
Working on getting params now

this simple statement said it all. at 3 months your system isn't quite even half way to ready for sps coral yet as stability is tough to gain in a young tank. if you used dry rock expect closer to a year.

 

[Dilan Patel]

Did like a 3-5min dip in CoralRx

all my Coral gets that dip though and tons of worms and pests came off of it

Im glad you dipped it!!! I never introduce anything without dipping including smooth skin corals. I am just pointing out that they don't fare very well with common dips. Ive heard that Bayer is the most gentle on those specific ones.

 

[Alexopora]

this simple statement said it all. at 3 months your system isn't quite even half way to ready for sps coral yet as stability is tough to gain in a young tank. if you used dry rock expect closer to a year.

+1

 

[One Reefing Boi]

this simple statement said it all. at 3 months your system isn't quite even half way to ready for sps coral yet as stability is tough to gain in a young tank. if you used dry rock expect closer to a year.

Yeah I just got a few extra frags of sps during a live sale for a good price hence why I pulled the trigger.
I used a combo of rock from my other tank, dry ‘life’ rock, and live rock from my lfs.

I understand the young tank thing, but if my Params come back normal, would a ‘young’ tank really bleach it in 3-5 days? Wouldn’t that be a slower death over a few weeks or so as the params fluctuate? Or could my params really be swinging that much daily to bleach it and kill it? I have a bunch of LPS and softies in there as well and they are all happy and coloring up beautifully. I understand they are a bit more forgiving but....

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Im glad you dipped it!!! I never introduce anything without dipping including smooth skin corals. I am just pointing out that they don't fare very well with common dips. Ive heard that Bayer is the most gentle on those specific ones.

Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind next time I get some coral and see if there are any differences

 

[ca1ore]

The frag in the rear isn't bleached .... it's dead. Cannot tell for sure on the front one.

 

[Alexopora]

Yeah I just got a few extra frags of sps during a live sale for a good price hence why I pulled the trigger.
I used a combo of rock from my other tank, dry ‘life’ rock, and live rock from my lfs.

I understand the young tank thing, but if my Params come back normal, would a ‘young’ tank really bleach it in 3-5 days? Wouldn’t that be a slower death over a few weeks or so as the params fluctuate? Or could my params really be swinging that much daily to bleach it and kill it? I have a bunch of LPS and softies in there as well and they are all happy and coloring up beautifully. I understand they are a bit more forgiving but....

i think it isnt just about params getting back to normal but stability. Due to younger tanks having less stable parameters as your bacteria population has yet to stabilise and mature. I can’t really pinpoint it but based on my experience a year old tank is definitely more conducive and welcoming to SPS than a three month old tank. I would suggest to be a little patient and allow the tank to mature a little longer. And if you must dabble in sps (trust me I know that temptation all too well), try out some hardy sps first. I’d say go for corals in the pocilloporidae family (pocis, stylo, seriatopora) or some hardier montis (monti cap, monti digis). In my experience, these can take more fluctuation than acros.

 

[Alexopora]

Also to add on, sometimes it just isnt your tank but the coral itself. Especially if the coral is already unhealthy and stressed. The change in environment will ultimately be the final nail in the coffin no matter how much care you give it. Acros are just really really finicky.

 

[One Reefing Boi]

The frag in the rear isn't bleached .... it's dead. Cannot tell for sure on the front one.

Yeah it pretty much came like that. It was incredibly faint when it arrived (I have pics) and working with the vendor to get a refund for that one

 

[landlubber]

Yeah I just got a few extra frags of sps during a live sale for a good price hence why I pulled the trigger.
I used a combo of rock from my other tank, dry ‘life’ rock, and live rock from my lfs.

I understand the young tank thing, but if my Params come back normal, would a ‘young’ tank really bleach it in 3-5 days? Wouldn’t that be a slower death over a few weeks or so as the params fluctuate? Or could my params really be swinging that much daily to bleach it and kill it? I have a bunch of LPS and softies in there as well and they are all happy and coloring up beautifully. I understand they are a bit more forgiving but....

to save a long winded answer. stability is measure in months... not days. I look at it as if ANY value (Ca, dKH, Mg, Nutrients, Salinity, temperature, lighting, feeding) is measurably fluctuating from one week to the next, your tank is not ready for sps.
As for the condition the frags were received, frags come in pale all the time but i see skeleton on the one frag and possible both. 3 days in a weakened state coupled with an unstable system results in expensive lessons.

 

[Dkmoo]

With respect to "stability" - its not just about "keeping the numbers that we can measure constant" because keep in mind that the stuff we are measuring - alk/ca/mg/no3/po4 is only the amounts that are left in the water. There's a lot of stuff happening in your tank that we cannot measure and those measurable numbers is only the tip of the iceburg that gives us an idea of what's happening in your tank, but not what's actually happening in your tank.

As a simple example - your testing shows that no3 is "stable" at 10PPM for 3 months in a roll. During this time you kept your feeding constant, for ex, at 50 units of "N" per month, and you kept your nutrient export constant, for ex, at 15 units of N per month. That "should" mean that your tank uptakes 25N (50 - 15 - 10) a month and is stable right? Not quite - in these 3 months one or more of the below could be happening:
1) Corals uptake 15N, pods take up 5N, algae take up 5N
2) algae bloom - takes up 20N, coral takes up 5N, pods starve
3) pods explode after algae - takes up 10N, new algae takes up the remaining 15N, Corals starve.

In the tank, these three sources constantly jostle for dominance and compete for nutrients. As you can see from the example, test kits show "stable" 10PPM, but doing this time your coral is experiencing nothing stable. It takes a long time for these three source to reach an equilibrium - and this is just one of MANY biological processes that's happening in your tank - others include Phos cycle, Carbon cycle, Calc cycle - all these have their own checks and balances where measuring po4/alk/calc doesn't give you the full picture. Plus, every time you dose a medicine/chemical treatment, add a filtration gadget, have some kind of "outbreak", do a large water change, it tips the balance a bit and can make the maturation process longer. This is why we say a tank takes a LONGGG time to mature - up to 1 year or longer, and wait before adding SPS.

I would also caution the "other corals have looked good for 3 months". While that is a very good sign and show that your tank is on the right path, please keep these two points in mind:
1) different species have different requirements.
2) Corals, like any organism, has certain degree of adaptability, so can look "happy" on the outside for months or years in suboptimal environment but the inside slowly weakens and its life span reduces until a certain minor stressor tips the scale over and it dies seemingly "for no reason". there's a lot of stories of "corals doing well for 8 months then suddenly die", a lot of that is due to this long term accumulation of negative factors that have very little outside sign.

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Thanks all for the input! Like I said, the corals were bought during a live sale and I couldn’t help it. The tank is just bare so I was hoping to add some more diversity to it. I understand SPS is difficult to keep and I appreciate all the time people took to write up some notes! I’m pretty much on SPS “wait and see” mode (won’t be adding any more for several months at least). Obviously I don’t want to just kill living things for an impatient experiment but, I’m not perfect. Below are my params I took today (got caught up with work drama for a release) so didn’t get around to it. Besides “new tank” do my parameters look ok?

**salinity is 1.025, forgot to add that**

 

[Dkmoo]

Thanks all for the input! Like I said, the corals were bought during a live sale and I couldn’t help it. The tank is just bare so I was hoping to add some more diversity to it. I understand SPS is difficult to keep and I appreciate all the time people took to write up some notes! I’m pretty much on SPS “wait and see” mode (won’t be adding any more for several months at least). Obviously I don’t want to just kill living things for an impatient experiment but, I’m not perfect. Below are my params I took today (got caught up with work drama for a release) so didn’t get around to it. Besides “new tank” do my parameters look ok?

**salinity is 1.025, forgot to add that**

Ca and mg a bit low IMO.

I run this in my mixed reef - alk/ca/mg/no3/po4/ph

9.5dkh/475/1350/10/.02/8.3

I run alk higher than what other may think bc I want to keep my PH at 8.3 bc I firmly believe PH is one of the more underappreciated parameters that's crucial to long term coral health where there is a huge difference between 7.7 and 8.3 even tho "common recommendation" says that range is fine

I posted quite a bit on this that you can search if interested.

 

[Dkmoo]

Also forgot to mention high phos in your tank - also common. Every organism uptake N and P at a fixed ratio so in mature tank with a lot of biodiversity it'll even out. Algae and corals tend to uptake higher ratio of N to P. Bacteria and pods relatively take up higher P. Since the ratio is fixed for specific organism, you can either start dosing amino so that ll increase N and help your corals and algae soak up the P, or just wait it out as your bacteria population increase to stabilize P. The high P is likely a cause of your current outbreak if its cyano.

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Ca and mg a bit low IMO.

I run this in my mixed reef - alk/ca/mg/no3/po4/ph

9.5dkh/475/1350/10/.02/8.3

I run alk higher than what other may think bc I want to keep my PH at 8.3 bc I firmly believe PH is one of the more underappreciated parameters that's crucial to long term coral health where there is a huge difference between 7.7 and 8.3 even tho "common recommendation" says that range is fine

I posted quite a bit on this that you can search if interested.

Cool thanks, I’ll look into the PH thing.
Would upping my water changes allow for higher levels of alk/mg/ca vs dosing have one be fit over the other? Like should I up my water changes (currently about 10% every 2 weeks) to try and raise those numbers or should I dose?