The Krib Marine/Reefs	[E-mail]

./Corals/bleaching

Contents:

1. [M] Corals in my tank turned Pale
   by sbjie/engr.psu.edu (Sanjay Joshi) (Sun, 28 Mar 93)
2. [M] Corals in my tank turned Pale
   by steve/rhythm.com (Steve Tyree) (Sun, 28 Mar 1993)
3. [M] Corals in my tank turned Pale
   by steve/rhythm.com (Steve Tyree) (Mon, 29 Mar 1993)
4. (No Title)
   by ()

[M] Corals in my tank turned Pale

by sbjie/engr.psu.edu (Sanjay Joshi)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 93
Newsgroup: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria

HI,

A strange thing happened in my tank.  Several corals (green rhondactis,
leather coral and butten polyps with green centers) overnite seem to have
lost thier pigmentation(flesh tones) and turned pale to white (the green
colors are fine, it just the browns/flesh tones that are affected).  
Kind oflike they have been bleached.  Other than that they are behaving 
normal.All the parameters in the tank check out ok.  The only things that 
have changed were

1) the power to the tank was lost for almost 10-12 hrs during the snow
   storm
and 2) after the power came back on, I did a partial water change with
       a different salt than I used before. I used the free sample of
       Coralife's salt that I had received,  before that I used to use
      reef crytals.

Any explanations as to what has happened ?  Did the corals loose thier
zoox algae ??  Will they come back to normal, etc ??

Any help or consolation will be welcome.

thanks,

sanjay joshi.

[M] Corals in my tank turned Pale

by steve/rhythm.com (Steve Tyree)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993
Newsgroup: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria

In article <sbjie.35.0-at-engr.psu.edu> sbjie-at-engr.psu.edu (Sanjay Joshi) writes:

>Any explanations as to what has happened ?  Did the corals loose thier
>zoox algae ??  Will they come back to normal, etc ??

 From what you has described, it indeed reads like you may have bleached
corals. I wonder what the water temperature peaked at due to the loss of
power from the storm, oops - I guess I should ask where you are located 
first ? It may have dropped if you needed to heat due to low ambient air
temps.
 How to deal with bleached corals. They are going to suffer from a lack 
of nutrient creation due to low zoox algae population. I would suggest
that you offer additional foods, but do not overload the system filtra-
tion. Live baby brine for small polyps and chunked frozen coral food
for large polyps possibly with vitamin or selcon additives. I only feed
my fish 1/2 frozen cube per day and also add baby brine at least once
a day. The large polyped corals get incidental food from fish feedings
and utilize zoox algae for nutrients. Unfortunatley I have no idea what
would be a save rate of feeding in your circumstance. If you over feed 
the corals may keep their zoox population low and never fully recover
them. For that matter, I wonder if they can control the population
rate or is that an environmentally controlled function ? The environ-
ment forced the algae to be expelled or maybe they have the capability
to make minute changes to the population. 
 Figuring out the lighting will be tough to. Should you increase the
duration of the photoperiod (daylight) so that the few zoox that remain
will create more nutrients per 24 hour period? My metal halide photo
periods are 12 hours now (permanent summer) and the corals which are
never directly feed, have some brown but still show natural pigment
during day and glow during night. If you do increase the photoperiod, 
you have to worry about the corals adjusting to this in the long run.
(ie - slowly decrease the photoperiod when it is clear that corals
will survive.).

 Steve Tyree - Reef Breeder

[M] Corals in my tank turned Pale

by steve/rhythm.com (Steve Tyree)
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1993
Newsgroup: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria

In article <sbjie.37.0-at-engr.psu.edu> sbjie-at-engr.psu.edu (Sanjay Joshi) writes:

>Currently, I have 5 flour. lights on the 29G tank, and they are on for
>12 hrs.  I will up to 14hrs, and see what happens.  Is there any record
>of corals surviving through this ??

I have heard that bleached corals have been able to regain their zoox
in captivity by placing them in a tank with healthy corals which contain
a population of zoox. You need to determine what caused this bleaching.

(No Title)

by

 Steve Tyree - Reef Breeder

	Up to Marine/Reefs The Krib	This page was last updated 29 October 1998