Water change leads to bleaching corals?

[drewsteriam5]

First, a little background. I have a 40 gallon corner tank. A bunch of live rock. It was filtered up until last week with a HOB AquaClear 110 running bioballs and a sponge. I removed the AquaClear and replaced it with a Reef Octopus HOB Protein Skimmer last week, and it has been doing pretty well IMO. Still breaking in, but pulling some nasty stuff out.

Anyways, the problem I'm having is this weekend I did about a 7 gallon water change. This water change was using my RO system and Reef Crystals salt. This is the first time I've ever mixed my own water. My refractometer put the salinity at around 1.024-1.025 and the tank was the same before the swap. I used a small Koralia Powerhead to mix the RO water and the salt and I mixed the salt in over the course of about 3 days with the Powerhead on the whole time and a heater keeping the water about the right temp. The only parameter of the water I checked before mixing was the salinity, but after stuff started bleaching I checked the parameters of the water, and the only thing off was that the calcium was down near 320. I've been moving it up since and it should be around 380 at the moment with the end goal being 420.

The question is, what did I do wrong? I must have missed something because all of the corals were doing so well. The most noticeable was my Tyree True Montipora Undata frag whose white polyps aren't out anymore, however the little hair things on my birdsnest frag haven't been out in 2 days. How do I remedy this?

Thanks for any help guys. Still new at this



Water Params for reference:
Nitrates 0 (as far as I can tell from my kit)
PH 8.2-8.4
Alk 9
Calcium 320 (was at around 400, but is low now)

 

[shred5]

Well you may have done nothing wrong. But trying to figure out what went wrong maybe tuff at this point.
Calcium was low and the water change may have just put them over the edge.
Also maybe bad salt. I had a partial rtn issue with some corallife salt where calcuim was not dissolving or was not in the mix. Anyway I saw my pink stylo start to rtn and what did I do, Went for a water change, well that made it worse.
RTN is a generic term and we really don't know what causes it and there is most like several things that can trigger it and it may also be several different diseases or problems. . Also you may want to double check your test kits are good..

Don't feel to bad, Sanjay who is one of the most well known is loosing his whole reef right now too RTN. So it happens to the best of us.

Best thing to do is get your parameters back to where they belong and maybe run some carbon and polyfilters.

Any pics so we can see if it is bleaching or maybe rtn.

 

[drewsteriam5]

How do you generally run carbon and polyfilters since I have no sump or anything? The tank is purely a HOB situation.

As for pics, I don't have any of the bleaching as I'm at work, but I can get some up tonight. My red montipora went from orangish looking to a really pale orange. My birdsnest is green and is still retaining its color, but the hairs on it don't come out. My Montipora Undata isn't really bleaching as much as the polyps aren't out. Besides the red montipora, the bleaching was really affecting what I think is another birdsnest. It is shaped like a capital Y and the back half of it is turning ghost white, but the front still has color. Not sure if those descriptions help at all, but I can get pics up later.

Thanks

 

[shred5]

How do you generally run carbon and polyfilters since I have no sump or anything? The tank is purely a HOB situation.

As for pics, I don't have any of the bleaching as I'm at work, but I can get some up tonight. My red montipora went from orangish looking to a really pale orange. My birdsnest is green and is still retaining its color, but the hairs on it don't come out. My Montipora Undata isn't really bleaching as much as the polyps aren't out. Besides the red montipora, the bleaching was really affecting what I think is another birdsnest. It is shaped like a capital Y and the back half of it is turning ghost white, but the front still has color. Not sure if those descriptions help at all, but I can get pics up later.

Thanks

Some how I read rtn in all that instead of bleaching.. But really the same applies and it does sound like possible bleaching. It also could be your corals are just adjusting to the cleaner water. Light penetration could be higher too which can cause bleaching. I have also seen tanks bleach where even though nutrient levels dropped which is good, but they were brought down to fast and the corals did not have time to adjust, I doubt that is the issue here though.

Corals can easily recover from bleaching if provided the right care.

 

[Battlecorals]

How immediate were the issues after the water Change?

I am almost thinking either bad water(chlorine, copper etc). Or bad salt.

It seems like whatever is happening is directly related to the water change you did.


And hey Dave!


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[shred5]

How immediate were the issues after the water Change?

I am almost thinking either bad water(chlorine, copper etc). Or bad salt.

It seems like whatever is happening is directly related to the water change you did.


And hey Dave!


Sent Via the R2R Forum APP

Good points also was the bucket clean, never had any chemicals like soaps used in it.

Yo Adam, actually I been meaning to talk with you.

 

[drewsteriam5]

How immediate were the issues after the water Change?

I am almost thinking either bad water(chlorine, copper etc). Or bad salt.

It seems like whatever is happening is directly related to the water change you did.

I would say I could begin to see issues within 12-24 hours maybe. The RO/DI machine was broken in as suggested by the BulkReefSupply where I bought it, and the TPS meter was reading out at 0.0. It could have been the salt, but I didn't test the water extensively before mixing it. I have at least half the bag left over, so if I mix up a new mini batch to test the parameters what kind of params am I looking for?

 

[drewsteriam5]

Good points also was the bucket clean, never had any chemicals like soaps used in it.

I actually bought the container that I mixed in from another guy who used it for his reef tank (which is much nicer than mine) so I assumed it was good to go, plus I rinsed it out with a bit of RODI water before I began filling it up to mix the salt.

 

[danka-cedium]

Don't rule out other things, I recently lost a lot of very nice LPs, which I attributed to a bad batch of instant ocean.

Not saying that was your problem, just try and think outside the box a little

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[drewsteriam5]

Don't rule out other things, I recently lost a lot of very nice LPs, which I attributed to a bad batch of instant ocean.

Not saying that was your problem, just try and think outside the box a little

Is there some way for me to test to make sure the container is acceptable before I rule it out?

 

[drewsteriam5]

Got home and my red montipora is ghost white. I think it's dead. Birdsnest looks like out is almost there too. Oddly enough I randomly have a bunch of Margarita snails flipped over. I'm going to try to attach pics from my phone. Don't know what to do. Also I forgot to mention there's a bunch of red algae showing up the last few days on the glass. Not sure if that's related.

 

[drewsteriam5]

Here is what I think is a birdsnest pretty much bleached out. I also have some kind of acro frag with white spots starting to show up on the base.

 

[danka-cedium]

Is there some way for me to test to make sure the container is acceptable before I rule it out?

Not really. I guess you could test the water in the container if you haven't already.

Is it possible your test kits are compromised?
Do you have anyone in the hobby near by that could test your water?

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[Reefing Madness]

CAL to low for you SPS. And the Leathers will close up for a bit if you tick them off. I'd not worry with eht exception of getting the CAL up.

 

[drewsteriam5]

Not really. I guess you could test the water in the container if you haven't already.

Is it possible your test kits are compromised?
Do you have anyone in the hobby near by that could test your water?

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I talked to the only other guy I know in the hobby and he offered to test it, however I won't have that chance for like 10 days. I did test with test strips I had lying around and I got about the same results as I got with my liquid API kit.