Need Help with Bleaching Corals

[kelly3341]

Good News:

I bumped my temp up to 82 to help my fish fight off an ich infestation. It certainly helped.

Bad News:

I am now losing 3 SPS and 1 Favia. I am assuming the high temp caused this. I have lowered the temp to 77. I have 2 150watt HQI's running 8 hours a day on a 100 gallon tank. They are mounted 4 inchs off the top of the tank. All other water parameters are normal. Will the corals come back or am I screwed. Am I right to assume the heat did this. The corals are an orange cap, an aqua marine acro, a green pollicapora, and a light pink favia. The favia is still hanging on for now. I would be happy to let someone who has a green thumb have the favia if they can nurse it back to health and give me some frags for it.

 

[vettesarebest]

I'll nurse it back to health. Im sorry to hear that your corals arent doing well. I would say YES that this temperature increase has hurt the corals. I do not think they are beyond saving. How bad are they? Did you gradually raise and decrease the temperature? What do you mean by green thumb?

 

[cameron]

It probably isn't the heat directly, but the speed at which the temp went up/down. Corals are pretty resilient and can withstand a wide variety of temps, but they don't like things to happen quickly. Keep the water temp constant and make sure you have good water params and they will likely come back.

 

[maveri9720]

I can help you out with the favia also. My tank is doing very well and I have alot of room.

I would have to assume the temp spike caused it. It all depends on how you did it. 82 is a normal running temp for alot of people, so it's not an extreme temperature. But, if you brought it up too quickly, that can cause a shock to the corals and make them stress out some.

Keep an eye on them and let us know how they progress.

 

[maveri9720]

Darn it Cameron, you beat me again. You and your quick typing.

 

[vettesarebest]

I beat you both!

 

[cameron]

Maveri9720 wrote: Darn it Cameron, you beat me again. You and your quick typing.

I only type 120 words (not correctly) a minute. Oh and I am sitting in front of the computer 20 hours a day doesn't hurt either.

Maroon yeah, but I was up getting a drink.

 

[maveri9720]

Maybe I should learn how to type correctly then. Oh well, at least I don't feel bad being on the comp 18hrs a day then. :up:

 

[kelly3341]

what would anyone trade for this?
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[vettesarebest]

is that its normal coloration? Looks to me more like a brain?

 

[kelly3341]

normal

 

[maveri9720]

The only thing I have is some Pom-Pom Xenia and some greenish/blueish candy canes.

 

[tsciarini]

Maroons15 wrote: is that its normal coloration? Looks to me more like a brain?

:lol3:
favia = brain

**pats Bryan on the head**

 

[kwl1763]

Take your temp back down also, it's really doing nothig for the Ich except making the reproduce faster and it's stressing the corals. As others said do it slowly though.

 

[george]

Kelly, I've had sps corals go into bleaching on me from stress before. Rebounds are hit and miss. I have a green slimer that I got from the ARC frag swap that bleached a spot during my kalk "glitch" and it is doing fine now. The bleach spot is still there, but the coral is doing fine. I have some other sps that has had spots bleach where I've had to snap off those branches because they got colonized by algae. That's, IMO, your main worry after outright death.

I have some brown w/ green tip pocillopora and some bright green montipora digitata I can help repopulate your tank with if you loose some. Also, I have my ubiquitous baby blue candy canes, but I think everyone in the club has my candy canes by now. None of my acros are fragable size yet, however.

 

[kappaknight]

How fast did you raise/lower the temperature? I go through 4-5 degree swings in a day I think...

 

[maveri9720]

kappaknight wrote: How fast did you raise/lower the temperature? I go through 4-5 degree swings in a day I think...

Same here. I go from 77 - 80/81 throughout a day.

 

[kelly3341]

I bumped the temp from 77 to 82, which then exceeded 82 with the help of the halides

 

[jmaneyapanda]

This is the risk of elevated temps as practice. When the hot day comes, it "accidentally" goes up to 86. My target temp is 77, but I will occasionally make it to 81ish. The only way I would ever prophylactically run a higher temp is if I had a good sized chiller top prevent overdoing it.

 

[maveri9720]

jmaneyapanda wrote: This is the risk of elevated temps as practice. When the hot day comes, it "accidentally" goes up to 86. My target temp is 77, but I will occasionally make it to 81ish. The only way I would ever prophylactically run a higher temp is if I had a good sized chiller top prevent overdoing it.

I'm the same way. I target 77/78 for my optimum temp, b/c when the lights come on, it bumps the temp up a couple degrees to around 80/81. And that's with the house temp around 68. Once summer comes, I keep the house around 74 degrees or so, so my temp would more than likely go through the roof, but I just bought a chiller to control that.

This is my first summer, so we'll see how things go.

When you keep your temp high, there is very little room for error on the high side, which leads to bad things.