Is this coral bleaching?

astraekid

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What happened to my gold hammer? I used about 1.5 ml of aiptasia X in a 13.5 gallon system and it totally spiked the alkalinity. I did two 50% water changes over two days, and it's starting to come out of it's skeleton, but almost all of the polyps have lost their gold and brown in favour of grey and black. Is it bleached? Will the colour come back? Also how long should I wait after this debacle to add new livestock, I had ordered a porcelain crab and a ninja star snail into the local petco, but if it's unsafe to add while all the corals are upset I wont. My yasha and shrimp are totally fine.

IMG_2359.jpeg IMG_2272.jpeg
 
What happened to my gold hammer? I used about 1.5 ml of aiptasia X in a 13.5 gallon system and it totally spiked the alkalinity. I did two 50% water changes over two days, and it's starting to come out of it's skeleton, but almost all of the polyps have lost their gold and brown in favour of grey and black. Is it bleached? Will the colour come back? Also how long should I wait after this debacle to add new livestock, I had ordered a porcelain crab and a ninja star snail into the local petco, but if it's unsafe to add while all the corals are upset I wont. My yasha and shrimp are totally fine.

IMG_2359.jpeg IMG_2272.jpeg
How long ago did this happen? Have you:
1.Corrected alk
2.Done a water change
3.Run carbon?
I had a similar incident with an aiptasia killing product. Im not 100% sure why the hammer lost color but I've had corals lose and regain color for various reasons.
 
How long ago did this happen? Have you:
1.Corrected alk
2.Done a water change
3.Run carbon?
I had a similar incident with an aiptasia killing product. Im not 100% sure why the hammer lost color but I've had corals lose and regain color for various reasons.
I ran carbon for 2 days and did 2 40% water changes over 2 days. This was like 4 days ago.
 
Changing a large amount of water like that so quick can alter the parameters too much, I caused a mini crash in my tank once from doing that. Have you tested the parameters?
 
Changing a large amount of water like that so quick can alter the parameters too much, I caused a mini crash in my tank once from doing that. Have you tested the parameters?
I admittedly don't actually have a test kit, but the condition of the corals improved vastly after the water changes. I fully think they would have died if not. I'm more looking for what's wrong with the coral, like bleaching or whatever, rather than why it happened. I know why it happened.
 
I would highly recommend grabbing some test kits. Get Salifert, Red Sea or Hanna's. Skip API kits
 

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