How to recolor a bleached coral after rescuing it?

[Treefer32]

I've had a larger plate coral that's about 5" in diameter. It's thick, close to an inch thick at the center and then gets thinner at the edges. I took it from a friend's tank where it had bleached of all color. I thought it was dead, there were a couple tentacles and that was it.

I've had it for 6 months about 16-18 inches from my T5HO (aquatic life) bulbs and my AI Hydra 52 LED fixture. I swear it's gotten bigger and at night there's probably 30+ tentacles all reaching out. They're short tentacles, but is very alive and seems to be healthy other than its color.

However, it's flesh is slightly off white (maybe cream colored). Is there anything I can do to color it up? I have no idea what the natural / original color was. I have a similar plate that's bright neon green and growing rapidly. It started as a 1/2" diameter frag and is close to 3 inches in diameter. So, I feel like the water quality and chemistry is good (based on testing and coral growth rate).

So, how do I recolor the coral or is that not possible? I'm open to target feeding. Right now my homemade fish food has max amino and the green and orange powder mixed into it to help with coral and fish color, but the plate doesn't seem to re-color up.


With the AI Primes I could change the spectrum if that would help? Right now the white coral looks kinda ugly, but I don't want to kill something that's growing well and doing well!

 

[TriggerFinger]

Any pics Of the coral and the placement in the tank? In always see them on the sand bed, is that where yours is?

 

[Silver14SS]

Plate corals should appreciate the target feeding, it's neat watching them pass the food from polyp to polyp to the mouth. Sounds like you are on the right track if the other plate coral is doing well, may just take some time and stability to color back up.

Have any pics?

 

[Treefer32]

Healthy plate had it's tentacles all out, seemed either hungry or happy when I took the pic. Then included an image of the shelf that the recovered plate was on that's all bleached then included a close up of it.

 

[twiatr2001]

If there is a lot of flow over it, your gonna want to turn off the pumps or returns to allow it to feed, I would feed reef roids but try to do a small dose at first maybe mixed with some mysis shrimp, try no to make too much unless you feed your fish at the same time with it, also make sure your lighting isn't too strong, maybe find someone with a par meter just to be sure your par is not too high, be sure your water parameters are in the right range and that they are consistent, temperature etc. don't over feed a little goes a long way, then as the coral gets better and healthier you can increase the food.

 

[twiatr2001]

definitely don't change lighting just yet until you find out what par your at, remember any time you change something in your tank it takes about 3 months to show any changes and results, so if you change stuff around a lot its not good in the long haul, corals are very adaptive but you have to give them time to be able to adapt.

 

[Treefer32]

I started with it on the sand bed and my dragon wrasse thought it was a toy.. Kept on flipping it over. . . Dragging it to his cave, and messing with it. I was putting it back daily and realized, a coral will die if it doesn't have some stability.

So, I epoxied it down on my shelf rock. Not sandy enough and probably too close to the lights. But, I can't have my dragon wrasse dragging it around either. He hasn't touched it since I put it there.. However, it hasn't colored up either.

 

[Larry L]

I think your best bet is to target feed a fair amount, since a bleached coral has very few zooxanthellae so it can't get any nourishment as a byproduct of their photosynthesis. You might also try inoculating the tank with some of Algagen's "PhycoPure Zooxanthellae" product to help build the population back up.