Staghorn bleaching?

[i cant think]

Okay, I’m so confused now, is bleaching only caused by too much light or also too little light? My light is the one that is on Red Sea Max Nanos. Here’s what it’s set at:

Here’s the coral

My blenny was picking at it aswell (Escenius lineatus). Any help with that part would be great, I got told this was an RD Joker Staghorn and would love to get to the bottom of it - I’ll do the tests now and update this when I get the answers.

 

[dthom]

Bleaching can often be due to chemical or nutrient issues.
I would be looking at your Alk (DKH) and your phosphate and nitrates.

I am currently seeing some bleaching in my tank, but this is because my nitrates and phosphates keep hitting zero.
As I have been feeding more and working to get those to increase I am getting more color back in my acro's.

I am not familiar with your lights, but that does seem like it is pushing the white led's pretty high.
White led's in particular can sometimes cause bleaching.

Just my 2 cent's

 

[T-J]

Not only can light be a cause of color loss, but so can nutrient issues. What's your N and P?

 

[Brucealmighty]

I agree with dthom about your white lighting being higher than your blues try increasing your blue lights whites are for us humans in lay speak and I will add my settings to maybe help

 

[Brucealmighty]

Ps I screen shot this at night is why the lights are reading 0%

 

[vetteguy53081]

light can be one issue, temp too warm and salinity too high are others causing release of zooxanthellae.
Additionally assure you dont have high alk and low calcium which will cause this also.
Parameter recommenddations:
Temp 77-79
ph 8.1-8.3
salinity 1.025
nitrate < .12
phos < .04
Ammonia < .03
mG 1300
Alk 8-11
CA 400- 440

Try :
Blue 80
white 12

If you have these:

UV -40
red 6
Green 12

IF THESE LIGHTS ARE BLUE, WHITE AND MOON ONLY, YOU MAY HAVE IINADEQUATE LIGHTING. WHAT IS WATTAGE OF FIXTURE?

 

[i cant think]

So one thing I should do is try to raise blues in my tank?

also my nutrients so far are:

Calcium: <290ppm but I knew about this and am dosing calcium into the tank through the ATO as we speak.
Magnesium: <760ppm I think Kalkwasser also doses this but I may be wrong (Please tell me if I am because I don’t want to lose this guy, Staghorn and monti are my favourite SPS and the spongiform is experiencing bleaching but not as much as the stag is)
KH: 5.6-5.3 DKH I’ll also bring this up.
PO4: 0.07 and I assume that’s alright (It’s stayed around that for 4 weeks now)
NO3/NH4: 0.25 ppm
PH: 8.2-8.0
NO3: 5.0 ppm
Temp: 76.1 (24.5 C)

I didn’t really want any “fake” colours which is why blues are so low, I prefer having actual natural colours over the enhanced colours we see in most aquariums. Is there any way I could have that and have a healthy stag?
My other issue with blues heavy is how everything is SO hard to get photos of and then you have everything that looks a lot darker than it actually is.

 

[i cant think]

As for wattage of them km pretty sure is 50w, the type of light is the RSLED50.
Due to it being lights out for now I’ll fiddle with them tomorrow and see if I can get my lights to 100% however in an 18 inch cube isn’t 50 W too strong?

 

[BranchingHammer]

If these Calcium, alk, and magnesium levels are true, your tank has some issues. Retest and follow the instructions very closely. If you get the same values, you must take action. How long have you had the coral in your tank? I'm guessing not very long? If these values are true, raise magnesium first to prevent the precipitation of calcium and alkalinity. Kalk does not replace magnesium, so you need to use a magnesium supplement like magnesium chloride or sulfate. Then raise calcium to acceptable range (400-450ppm) with calcium chloride. Finally, slowly raise your alk (no more than 1 dkh per day) to 7-8 dkh with sodium bicarbonate or carbonate. Again, I think these values must be testing errors, as they are extremely low. There are videos on youtube that show how to use the test kits properly if you still need help. Definitely retest.

 

[Macdaddynick1]

So one thing I should do is try to raise blues in my tank?

also my nutrients so far are:

Calcium: <290ppm but I knew about this and am dosing calcium into the tank through the ATO as we speak.
Magnesium: <760ppm I think Kalkwasser also doses this but I may be wrong (Please tell me if I am because I don’t want to lose this guy, Staghorn and monti are my favourite SPS and the spongiform is experiencing bleaching but not as much as the stag is)
KH: 5.6-5.3 DKH I’ll also bring this up.
PO4: 0.07 and I assume that’s alright (It’s stayed around that for 4 weeks now)
NO3/NH4: 0.25 ppm
PH: 8.2
NO3: 5.0 ppm
Temp: 76.1 (24.5 C)

I didn’t really want any “fake” colours which is why blues are so low, I prefer having actual natural colours over the enhanced colours we see in most aquariums. Is there any way I could have that and have a healthy stag?

You kind of answered your own questions here.

My guess would be your CA too low 400+
MG too low 1200+
Kh Too low 7-8 to be safe
po4 looks ok
NH4 .25 are you still cycling the tank? How old is it.
PH Doubt your PH is 8.2 since your alk is soo low, but I might be very wrong here.
NO3 looks good.
Temp Too low. 78 minimum usually a good goal to strive for
Light - best would be to borrow a par meter and see if you have sufficient par for acros.

Acropora are not as forgiving as other corals, they will be finicky if any one of those issues I've mentioned are present in the system and you have quite a few things to solve here.

I would just do a very large waterchange, and then learn how to keep thenumbers up.

 

[i cant think]

I’ve owned a Staghorn acro before in my 4’ tank but killed it off due to an accidental use of Melafix in the reef.

Those readings were correct, I have now started to dose Kalk and Seachem.

You kind of answered your own questions here.

My guess would be your CA too low 400+
MG too low 1200+
Kh Too low 7-8 to be safe
po4 looks ok
NH4 .25 are you still cycling the tank? How old is it.
PH Doubt your PH is 8.2 since your alk is soo low, but I might be very wrong here.
NO3 looks good.
Temp Too low. 78 minimum usually a good goal to strive for
Light - best would be to borrow a par meter and see if you have sufficient par for acros.

Acropora are not as forgiving as other corals, they will be finicky if any one of those issues I've mentioned are present in the system and you have quite a few things to solve here.

I would just do a very large waterchange, and then learn how to keep thenumbers up.

The rocks and water are Atleast 4 years old. The tank is 1 year on March 12th, I have just rechecked ammonia because I also thought they were high and they are 0. In the morning I’ll redo most of the tests (The trace elements - KH, Mg, Ca, NH3/NH4 are all correct now though). The ATO isn’t losing water as fast as I anticipated.

Temperature is being a nightmare and won’t move any higher than that, over here 78 F = 25 C and I hate to be that person but how bad of a difference is it? I don’t mean to sound rude or anything.

As for the water change I do 25% weekly water changes, although recently they’ve messed up a bit and having to wait a bit so my tank went two weeks without a WC, I was waiting to do the WC on my 4’ tank to move a Shrimp out of the tank but couldn’t go to the LFS before that weekend. I ended up doing a WC that Friday and now I feel like if I did another one now my parameters would swing even more.

 

[Macdaddynick1]

I’ve owned a Staghorn acro before in my 4’ tank but killed it off due to an accidental use of Melafix in the reef.

Those readings were correct, I have now started to dose Kalk and Seachem.



The rocks and water are Atleast 4 years old. The tank is 1 year on March 12th, I have just rechecked ammonia because I also thought they were high and they are 0. In the morning I’ll redo most of the tests (The trace elements - KH, Mg, Ca, NH3/NH4 are all correct now though). The ATO isn’t losing water as fast as I anticipated.

Temperature is being a nightmare and won’t move any higher than that, over here 78 F = 25 C and I hate to be that person but how bad of a difference is it? I don’t mean to sound rude or anything.

As for the water change I do 25% weekly water changes, although recently they’ve messed up a bit and having to wait a bit so my tank went two weeks without a WC, I was waiting to do the WC on my 4’ tank to move a Shrimp out of the tank but couldn’t go to the LFS before that weekend. I ended up doing a WC that Friday and now I feel like if I did another one now my parameters would swing even more.

Temp alone is probably not terrible, however, my across and other corals, in general, don't like drops in temp like that. Also, none of the things you've mentioned are a big deal on their own/temporarily but all of the things together are not a hospitable environment for corals like Acropora. I am not sure what you mean by keeping temperature has been a nightmare; if your heaters can't keep up then you should get an additional heater to get the temperature more stable. Presumably, your room temperature is low, if you get your tank to let's say 78, your evaporation rate will go up also, solving your ATO demand issue also.

 

[dthom]

I agree with MacDaddy, but I would do smaller but frequent water changes.
Need to get those foundation values up.

 

[i cant think]

I’ll do my weekly water change tomorrow and test the levels. Bleaching seems to be getting better from what I can see - New growth is beginning ontop of the frag.

 

[i cant think]

So funny thing I just remembered:
1. My lights are not set onto acclimation
2. I have read my Mg, Ca, KH tests wrong and did them correctly today after the water change. My results were:
Mg: 1400
Ca: 495 (Somewhere between 490 & 500)
KH: 8.4

I must say, this spongoides (I assume a monti) is doing amazing!

Polyps are out and happy, only bit of bleaching is that white area in the photo.

The Stag is doing I guess better so I assume it was the lighting acclimation that was the issue.

Well, I just saw the blenny tanking a nice nibble at it… Anyone know the natural diet of Escenius lineatus?