Ugh yes, yet another birds nest bleaching post…lol
Long story short, my nitrates have been bottomed out for about a month and caused a lot of my corals to lose significant color. I maintain my alk between 9-10 so low nutrients + a higher alk was starving my corals I believe. The last week i’ve been feeding more and lightly dosing aminos to bring up my nitrates and I have them at 10PPM now which was higher than I anticipated. I did this while I significantly reduced chaeto in my fuge, which in hindsight was probably too much to do at once. All of my corals except my birds nest frag have responded well and have significantly colored up. All of the sudden I notice my birds nest is now bleaching from the bottom up, most likely unhappy with the higher nitrates it wasn’t used to. I’ve made a couple changes this week but they should only increase stability - I added a temp controller and fans and an ATO to maintain salinity.
Calcium: 440
mag: 1260
alk: 9.5
nitrate: 10
phosphate: .06
salinity: 1.025
Im reluctant to do a bunch of water changes to quickly lower nitrates as that is probably just as stressful so I am kinda stuck. I’ve increased the photoperiod in my fuge to slowly bring nitrates down over this week. Should I cut the dead area off and re-frag it or is this guy likely a goner?
Long story short, my nitrates have been bottomed out for about a month and caused a lot of my corals to lose significant color. I maintain my alk between 9-10 so low nutrients + a higher alk was starving my corals I believe. The last week i’ve been feeding more and lightly dosing aminos to bring up my nitrates and I have them at 10PPM now which was higher than I anticipated. I did this while I significantly reduced chaeto in my fuge, which in hindsight was probably too much to do at once. All of my corals except my birds nest frag have responded well and have significantly colored up. All of the sudden I notice my birds nest is now bleaching from the bottom up, most likely unhappy with the higher nitrates it wasn’t used to. I’ve made a couple changes this week but they should only increase stability - I added a temp controller and fans and an ATO to maintain salinity.
Calcium: 440
mag: 1260
alk: 9.5
nitrate: 10
phosphate: .06
salinity: 1.025
Im reluctant to do a bunch of water changes to quickly lower nitrates as that is probably just as stressful so I am kinda stuck. I’ve increased the photoperiod in my fuge to slowly bring nitrates down over this week. Should I cut the dead area off and re-frag it or is this guy likely a goner?