Tenius bleaching

[Oshanickreef]

Hello,

I have been dealing with this issue for some time now. I feel like i have tried everything to help and I’m not having any luck. Most of my corals are happy and growing with the exception of my tenius sps corals and a few others. They are all bleaching then eventually dying off with STN. I cannot figure out what is wrong. I’m convinced it’s a coral disease that is slowly killing tenius or it’s my cheap lighting.

My parameters are decent:
Nitrate: 11.7
Phosphate .1
Alkalinity 8.8 dKH
Calcium 505
Magnesium 1363
Temp 76.7
Salinity 1.026

I dose all for reef and two part for adjustments. I have auto water changes going 3 gallons per day on a 350 gallon system. I have lots of flow, lots of fish, feed aggressively, and i just can’t figure this out.

My affected animals seem to be primarily tenius. But other animals that seem unhappy are a few torches, I’m seeing bleaching on a few montipora that are on the sand bed, and my forest fire digi big colony also has seemed unhappy with very little polyp extension. I also had a small clam that died in the display tank. I had it in my frag tank under radions and it was fine. Moved it to the display and it died in a few weeks. I have not seen any fish picking which sorta makes me think it’s my lighting. I have two Orphek bars and 6 aquatic life xp48 led lights. I bought them because they were very reasonably priced and they have grown coral including tenius but lately i just can’t catch a break with the STN! Would love to hear any advice as i am baffled on what is causing my favorite sps corals to die.

Thank you!

Nick

 

[shakacuz]

do an ICP test to see if you have any trace elements needing replenishing(edit: or anything over a specific amount. sometimes copper, aluminum, etc creep up due to foods/equipment/biomedia). outside of that, i'd say the po4 is high, regardless of no3 level.

when the STN began, where there any changes to the tank? new fish, coral, equipment(rusting, etc)? i'm not familiar with those aquatic life lights, but depending if they do not put out enough PAR - could be another reason.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’m not seeing any reason for bleaching in what was written.

 

[Pod_01]

As mentioned by Randy there is nothing in your description that should lead to STN/RTN.

Also if the lights worked before it is unlikely light issues, unless the intensity dropped/ increased. Maybe check the settings…

My suggestion is to do ICP test to see if there is accumulation of some trace elements. Some foods can be heavy on some trace elements or perhaps something else got into the water.

In my case particular coral/fish food drove my Molybdenum levels through the roof. Not sure if Molybdenum at elevated levels is an issue but I stopped using it.

Good luck,

 

[Gabaghoul]

Any updates on this? I had a similar issue. Just did a Cipro treatment and a pretty large 160 gallon water change after the treatment. I suspected it was bad bacteria. Things seem better. Seeing some growth, and some color coming in. It’s been about 1 month since the treatment. A couple of weeks since the ware change was completed. I did the change over 2 weeks using my Neptune Dos. Not sure if it was the Cipro or the water change. I hadn’t done a WC in like 3 years. :-)