Torch coral Bleaching

[MERKEY]

What are you using besides water changes to control po4?

 

[rogersb]

My tank get a total of 8 hours of light with only 5 hours at full intensity, so lighting is most likely not it. I've recently had a bacteria bloom that is chewing through my po4 and nitrates and I am getting a loss of color in my LPS. Just a heads up to be careful not to swing too far in the low end of the numbers.

 

[rapid]

yea im not im around .25 in p04 gonna try getting it down to atleast .05

 

[rapid]

i have noticed a huge difference in the extension of not only my anemone but also in my torch ! bleaching seemed to stop so i shall monitor with continued weekly water changes.

i did use a little of Phosphate-e to reduce the phosphate befor doing a water change seemed to work really well will take another test reading tommorrow night

 

[rapid]

Very very nice. Huge improvement. Let's chip away at those phosphates. Calcification has been shown to slow or stop when po4 is greater than 0.20 ppm. I think that weekly 10% changes with the great feeding habits is going to give you great overall improvement across the board, for all corals.

Also, know that bleaching goes both ways - too much and too little light

so update now the phosphate are back at .25 and my nitrates are super low like almost zero

 

[tsouth]

so update now the phosphate are back at .25 and my nitrates are super low like almost zero

What have you done since? Something brought them up. Don’t let your nitrates get too low and don’t let your phosphates hit zero either. Watch for Dino’s

 

[rapid]

All I did was water change and wash out a mechanical filter sponge

 

[tsouth]

Did you use tap for washing the filter sponge?

 

[rapid]

Did you use tap for washing the filter sponge?

yes .... i realize my mistake.

 

[tsouth]

yes .... i realize my mistake.

Woop Woop! Fwiw - I am pretty sure that you can do this when cleaning things, but the caveat is that you must dry it out after washing, and you must let it sit in sunlight to be safe and dry out for sure for sure!

Another thought is that you can wash out these sponges when doing water changes. Use the drained water and just swirl around the sponge and what not in there.

 

[rapid]

yes i usually do this but for some reason i didnt will know this for the future hopefully there are no negative effects from this oops.

 

[rapid]

okay so coral is still bleached in the same spot dosnet seem to have gotten worse ! thinking it was the light no being bright enough due to my change

 

[rapid]

This is a great step in the right direction!

Reducing feeding is going to help a lot. It's a hard habit to kick but it is tremendously helpful. Also, wanted to be sure to let you know that euphylia and lps should not be overfed. They need time to digest the food, and if there isn't any - then the food will rot inside their bodies and cause toxins to arise, ultimately hurting the coral. I suggest 2-3 times a week - something chunkier like Mysis from a turkey baster or tongs.

If you get a chance to check your levels again, let me know what you come back with later this evening once all the water has had a chance to mix up.

ph is 8
PO4 is still at .5
NO3 is at 25

 

[tsouth]

ph is 8
PO4 is still at .5
NO3 is at 25

That's great. So we can totally rule out exactly what may have made your phosphates so high. You'll need to take control of those phosphates again. Better levels would be like ~0.05 or 0.1 - that's a big leap so either you do a large water change again or look into phosphate control.

Fwiw the torch is going to take quite a while to heal. Very happy to hear it stopped bleaching more, but know that returning color is a long term job for this one (I expect 1-2 months)