Coral Bleaching Need Advice.

[enzo86]

Over the past week or two I have seen a rapid down turn in a few of my Montis. Please advise if you are able to provide some advise as I am not coming up with much. My Acro's seem to be doing ok.

8.1 (Hanna)
460 (Red Sea)
1420 (Red Sea)
Nitrate 0.25 (Dosing 0.4 PPM Potassium Nitrate daily) (Red Sea Test kit)
Phosphate 0.00 (Hanna)
PAR Bottom 200 Top 350. (2 Ai-52, T5 Combo 3 Blue 1 Coral)
Photo Period: t5 4 hrs AI-52 8 hrs
Temp 77.4 to 77.8 Daily
Dosing Kalk Daily
GAC Reactor
High Flow

 

[Crabs McJones]

When you dose kalk, how much are you dosing? how much of an alk swing do you experience daily?

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Pretty low nutrients for that high of par on Monti's.

Also what crabs said.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Pretty low nutrients for that high of par on Monti's.

Also what crabs said.

Agree, .25 nitrate and no phosphate could be a contributing factor

 

[enzo86]

ALK is stable been between 7.9 to 8.1 over the past 6 weeks. I have been looking at pushing up the Nitrate but it seems odd that the other corals seem to be doing ok. The Monti is on the sandbed for the past 8 weeks and was doing great a week ago.

 

[enzo86]

Well things seem to be going to crap in a basket quickly. I have been slowly trying to bring up my Nitrates and they are up to about 1-1.5 PPM now but not everything in the tank has started to bleach. I turned the Hydra 52's down by 20% to see if that would help when I Originally posted but things seems to be going downhill quickly. I stopped dosing and ALK is still at 8.1 which leads me to believe that nobody is currently taking up any ALK/or Calc right now. I also quit dosing the Nitrate in thoughts that this was making the issue worse.

Need help with a direction guys as I feel like I am about to loose everything. Attached another picture the colors are waaay deeper due to the orange filter on the image.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Continue to dose N03 till at 5-10 ppm.
Keep a eye on your P04 while doing this. Dose P04 if need once at Nitrate target. Hold P04 at 0.02 once N03 is at Target. Raising N03 will drive down P04.

Once there, test for both at least once a week and adjust as needed. Then give it some time for them to recover.

 

[Flippers4pups]

P04 dosing can be done with seachem's phosphorus.

 

[enzo86]

P04 dosing can be done with seachem's phosphorus.

I have BW NeoPhos for That, My Hanna P04 check isn't super sensitive for the low end though. Thoughts what I should be doing with lighting, I have my T5's turned off right now which cuts total part by about 100. Only running on the Hydra 52's right now.

 

[enzo86]

I have the Hanna HI713

 

[Flippers4pups]

I have BW NeoPhos for That, My Hanna P04 check isn't super sensitive for the low end though. Thoughts what I should be doing with lighting, I have my T5's turned off right now which cuts total part by about 100. Only running on the Hydra 52's right now.

Running the lights like that can help till your nutrients are up. I have the same checker.

 

[enzo86]

One Additional Item I noticed is all the Monti's have some sort of white powder on them now. I blew it all of with a baster but it seems to be back. Is this the start of STN ?

 

[Flippers4pups]

One Additional Item I noticed is all the Monti's have some sort of white powder on them now. I blew it all of with a baster but it seems to be back. Is this the start of STN ?

Not sure what that may be. Where you blow off, is the tissue gone or white underneath?

 

[jda]

New tank? Less than a year old? It looks kinda new with a lack of coralline. If so, then you are just gonna have to wait. The aragonite is probably new and binding most of the phosphate - this is a good thing and it will start to come up soon. You need to be using the Phosphorous Ultra Low before you dose phosphates... the other one is not too good at low levels. Dosing nitrogen does not always help anything... once you have enough, then you have enough... if there is some available, then it does not matter if you have .25 or 10... but true zero is bad (again, no good test kits to measure this).

If your tank is fairly new, then I would stop doing just about everything and just wait it out. I know that it sucks, but everything that you do to interfere might need repaid in like kind, or more, on the back end.

 

[enzo86]

seems to be white underneath

 

[enzo86]

Tank Is almost 2 years old, I used to scrape the back glass, RSR450.

 

[enzo86]

I am guessing that my Dosing of NO3 drove the PO4 into the ground and started this mess. What originally was probably slowly creeping up as a lack of NO3 has probably ticked everything off with Zero P04.

 

[jda]

Zero is not good. If you even have 1 or 2 PPB, then you are fine. Again, only the Ultra Low can get this reading.

That one piece looks like light burn to me. Turning the LEDs down might be good for a while.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Make sure you don't see nudis at night. I agree the white areas look like light burn and it isn't good to dose nitrates with no phosphates like you have been doing unless your using a Hanna like jda said.

 

[enzo86]

UPDATE:
Picked up the Hanna HI736 ULR Phosphorus URL.

Reading 9PPB Phosphorus = 9 * 0.003066 = 0.0275 PPM PO4.

I would guess this is the cause of my issues. Should I be some place between 0.03 and 0.06 PPM for PO4 with a NO3 around 5-10 PPM ? Nitrates are currently around 2.5