Reef nutrition

Thoughts on cause of slow SPS bleaching

H2OPlayar

H2OPlayar

Supporting Member
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Hello BAR,

Over the last couple of months, I have noticed my Cali Tort has begun bleaching on the underside, starting from the base and growing up. I thought it might be due to lack of light on the bottom side, but the acro's right next to it are not showing the same behavior. A few weeks ago, I clipped and re-glued a single colony to see if that would stop it, but the spread has continued.

I know I have red bugs as well as many other things, but my other smooth skin acro's don't exhibit this slow bleaching. I would like to hear the club's thoughts around what it could be as well as ways to fix it. I haven't had any abnormal swings lately that the tank hasn't seen over the last year or so (alk, temp etc.).

Thank you!


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Oh man I’m so sorry hear some of your colonies in your beautiful tank are basically stressed out. Just tossing out ideas/potential stressors : light shock, Alk shock, salinity shock, or vibrio or some other bad bacteria ?
 
@Plankton Thanks for the reply. Just going down the list:

Lights have been the same AP700's for 2 plus years since I added the 2nd one. They are only bleaching on the underside where there is less light so that is interesting.

Alk routinely swings between 8 and 9 over the course of weeks as the Trident plays with levels and I change the tank. Possibly, but the great polyp extension on the top side leads me to believe something else. My biggest Alk swing comes at the beginning of each month when I swap my high capacity GFO out of my reactor to bring my phosphates down, but I can catch that now and mitigate it by only running my gfo 6 hours a day. I was thinking it might be something here too, but again, this is a routine that the coral has been through for the better part of the last 2 years.

Vibiro or other bacteria; I have little to no experience here, but the internet accompanies RTN (rapid being the word I am keying into) with vibirio, and this bleaching has been slow over the last 3-4 months.

Thanks for the ideas, it is good to type it out to put the data down on one page.

I have never heard of RTN/STN X. What have you found with that product? It looks like a "magic" product you dose to the tank. While I am not totally against those, I like to know what the mechanism is before I use it. Have you ever used it as a dip instead of a whole tank treatment?
 
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H2OPlayar said:
@Plankton Thanks for the reply. Just going down the list:

Lights have been the same AP700's for 2 plus years since I added the 2nd one. They are only bleaching on the underside where there is less light so that is interesting.

Alk routinely swings between 8 and 9 over the course of weeks as the Trident plays with levels and I change the tank. Possibly, but the great polyp extension on the top side leads me to believe something else. My biggest Alk swing comes at the beginning of each month when I swap my high capacity GFO out of my reactor to bring my phosphates down, but I can catch that now and mitigate it by only running my gfo 6 hours a day. I was thinking it might be something here too, but again, this is a routine that the coral has been through for the better part of the last 2 years.

Vibiro or other bacteria; I have little to no experience here, but the internet accompanies RTN (rapid being the word I am keying into) with vibirio, and this bleaching has been slow over the last 3-4 months.

Thanks for the ideas, it is good to type it out to put the data down on one page.

I have never heard of RTN/STN X. What have you found with that product? It looks like a "magic" product you dose to the tank. While I am not totally against those, I like to know what the mechanism is before I use it. Have you ever used it as a dip instead of a whole tank treatment?
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Ingredients : zinc and chelators
Active : Chyrsanthemum extract

I use it proactively as dip and in my nano frag tank.

Yours appears to be more ‘STN’ which is harder to diagnose but even though bit has worked for you I would even put that GFO swap to a partial swap so phosphate levels are more even; since we all know what happens when phosphate changes suddenly either too high or to zero.

I can’t think of any thing else other than you forgot to sacrifice a virgin to the reef gods!
 
So one data point from the picture is that the dead base is very clean. There is no detritus, cyano, or algae growth that I can see.
That leads me to my wild guess: Starvation. Not enough food, not enough nitrates.

What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?
Perhaps increase nitrates if zero.
You might try feeding spot feeding good quality zooplankton for a while at night when polyps are extended.
 
My gfo swap takes me from .4 down to .1 or so over a week, then the next 3 weeks get it back to .4. My nitrates are around 40. I feed really heavy already @Blaise006 was crying watching me put all the coral food in the tank. I have an auto feeder dropping tdo 4x a day in addition to frozen foods and I use aminos and the powders.

Yeah, that rabbit fish, lawnmower blenny crew and tang crew don't let any algae grow.


Flow is an interesting thought, all of the faces that are dying are facing my powerheads. But then why would the necrosis start at the bottom? Thanks again for your input!
 
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H2OPlayar said:
My gfo swap takes me from .4 down to .1 or so over a week, then the next 3 weeks get it back to .4. My nitrates are around 40. I feed really heavy already @Blaise006 was crying watching me put all the coral food in the tank. I have an auto feeder dropping tdo 4x a day in addition to frozen foods and I use aminos and the powders.

Yeah, that rabbit fish, lawnmower blenny crew and tang crew don't let any algae grow.


Flow is an interesting thought, all of the faces that are dying are facing my powerheads. But then why would the necrosis start at the bottom? Thanks again for your input!
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His feeding habits give me nightmares haha
 
H2OPlayar said:
My gfo swap takes me from .4 down to .1 or so over a week, then the next 3 weeks get it back to .4. My nitrates are around 40. I feed really heavy already @Blaise006 was crying watching me put all the coral food in the tank. I have an auto feeder dropping tdo 4x a day in addition to frozen foods and I use aminos and the powders.

Yeah, that rabbit fish, lawnmower blenny crew and tang crew don't let any algae grow.


Flow is an interesting thought, all of the faces that are dying are facing my powerheads. But then why would the necrosis start at the bottom? Thanks again for your input!
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I stopped running GFO after I was experiencing similar problems as you with my SPS, specifically my red dragon and my ORA hawkins, both smooth skins, along with other "dirty" corals like mushrooms shrinking. .4 phos is a lot though, so i dont know if this is the solution. Maybe running less GFO to keep phosphates down but avoiding swinging them every 3 weeks?
 
Kremis said:
I stopped running GFO after I was experiencing similar problems as you with my SPS, specifically my red dragon and my ORA hawkins, both smooth skins, along with other "dirty" corals like mushrooms shrinking. .4 phos is a lot though, so i dont know if this is the solution. Maybe running less GFO to keep phosphates down but avoiding swinging them every 3 weeks?
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I was thinking this might not be ideal, so I have started running my reactor only 8 hours a day, with the intent that it drops the phosphates much slower, then they rise back up slowly again with feeding.
 
H2OPlayar said:
I was thinking this might not be ideal, so I have started running my reactor only 8 hours a day, with the intent that it drops the phosphates much slower, then they rise back up slowly again with feeding.
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I concur that a swinging phosphate level isn’t helping and there is quite a bit of anecdotal story/evidence associating gfo and STN. And smooth skin/deep water are even more notoriously finicky.

If you ditched the gfo what would the phosphate level be in the tank?

PS I used to feed only froozen foods and my nutrients we not even detective so I switched to pellets and needed up with too much nutrients because the pellets are so damn dense. Personally I’d reduce the use of pellets in your tank for more frozen foods
 
I mix together my carbon and GFO about 1:1 ratio in a packed bed in the reactor, rather than full GFO with tumbling. I also have relatively slow flow through the reactor. It seems to give a longer slower uptake of phosphate, and to make it more in line with the useful life of the carbon. I’ve not actually done a lot of testing to prove this, but it makes sense to me and seems to work well.

(PS: I’m not weighing in on the phosphate being related to the STN, I have nothing useful to add about that)
 
Plankton said:
If you ditched the gfo what would the phosphate level be in the tank?
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What is +.3 every month? :)


I haven't been testing phosphate regularly lately, but when I was having issues with algae last year, it was because I wasn't changing gfo out every month and let phosphates get up around .4 or so before I got more diligent. Also more tangs and cleanup crew helped there.
 
JVU said:
I mix together my carbon and GFO about 1:1 ratio in a packed bed in the reactor, rather than full GFO with tumbling. I also have relatively slow flow through the reactor. It seems to give a longer slower uptake of phosphate, and to make it more in line with the useful life of the carbon. I’ve not actually done a lot of testing to prove this, but it makes sense to me and seems to work well.
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I do this with ~ 4 part high capacity gfo to 1 part carbon, assuming the carbon lasts ~1 month when I change the gfo out. I like the idea of choking the flow and keeping it on longer to modulate the phosphate removal. I think I'll play with that over the next month or so.

In case this doesn't stop, anyone want Cali Tort frags?

When this was happening to my smaller oregon tort colony, I fragged it and moved it. The 3 frags are all doing well and the colony in its new location is no longer receding.
 
I’ve been following this thread thinking about something intelligent to add. A similar thing happened to me. Started a few months ago. All grown from 1” frags. There was another sps coral in front of these two that was also stn. I pulled it out and put it into my Frag tank. Stn stopped. At the same time a hammer started to loose heads too. I’ve had these corals for years. Honestly I don’t think we will ever know. I was thinking bacteria? But who knows. When something happens like this. I Frag a piece and move it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. My buddy used to say. When it rains sps die cuz the make up water is dirty. RO/DI doesn’t catch everything
 

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I’ve been having nutrient issues in my 25g lagoon nano so decided to go old school and bought three baby (under 2”) maxima. In the past so long as you can maintain alk clams are crazy good at consuming nutrients.
 

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Plankton said:
I’ve been having nutrient issues in my 25g lagoon nano so decided to go old school and bought three baby (under 2”) maxima. In the past so long as you can maintain alk clams are crazy good at consuming nutrients.
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Back in the day we would put store bought clams in our sand bottom sumps. Do your own research though, that was a long time ago and I took more uneducated risks back then.

Fresh clams from behind the counter at the market. Take them home, put each individual in a glass of seawater to then see which were still alive to put in the sandy sump.
 
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