so about a week or so ago i noticed two branches from my keyan tree that i had placed on rocks after they had fallen off started turning white. not only the little trees but a neighbring star polyp colony started bleaching aswell. its soo neven spread to the origional kenyan tree on the other side of the tank. both seem to still open and close regularly but have lost most of their color. i have a 55 gallon reef with a 125 wet dry, skimmer rated for 75 gallons, originally i had 2 48" T5 fixtures pn glass tops but recently i bought a 48" compact florescent fixture with 2 64 watt actinics and 2 65 watt 10,000ks. My water parameters are perfect, i feed kent's phytoplex as directed as well as strontium, liquid calcium, and iodide. only fish are a damsel and a snowflake eel, 3 turbo snails, and about 6 nassarius snails. I realized my temp was quite high due to spring heat, about 85-86 deg. so i removed my glass tops turned off my heater and fixed an egg crate lid with covers on the edges for the eel. also i have a fan above my sump to help cool the air as it trickles. since i know my room temp is definatly not helping i'm installing ac units this week. I did some reaserch in a book called "Aquarium Corals" by eric h. borneman, and "Soft corals and sea fans" by fabricius and alderslade,(both books i highly recommend) and came to the conclusion that my kenyan tree has expelled its zooxanthelle in an atempt to evolve to the parameters in my tank. i believe my extremely high temperature is to blame for this problem. does anyone else have any advice or opinions for me. any info is much appreciated.
kenyan tree bleach HELP!
- Thread starter osteoglossum
- Start date
From what I read it seem's the high temperature is the cause to why this happened how long was the temperature that high? Most often when they expel there zooxanthelle it is due to temperature. Which is happening in the wild as we speak a 2 degree temperature raise can cause your coral's to bleach however Soft Coral's don't have Calcium Structure's such as you SPS, LPS. It sound's like it died and expelled its zooxanthelle cause of the temp. spike.
mr.reef24
mr.reef24
well i've brought the temp down and the kenyan trees act fine still open and close just they have lost all the color same with the star polyps that also bleached. i'm doing a water change today and hoping in the next few weeks everything will even out.
osteoglossum;3073574; said:
That is the best direction to take and all you can do now is baby them real good and they possibly may pop back up with life. I hope they do for you good luck and keep me posted on them.
mr.reef24
usually once bleached its hard to get to come back. Some corals pull through and grow back the algae but otherwise perish slowly. The algae is there source of food, and without this over time, they will die.
Bleaching could have also happened due to the change in lights. Compacts create a lot of heat which aids in water temps being high, more so over the T5s, and still dont produce as much usable light as t5s do. yeah there intence but i find a better amount of growth under t5s then i do under PC's... IMO i would have purchased a better t5ho unit to put of the tank, with 4 bulbs built into it. this would have cost the same if not less, depending on what your going for i guess, and would have probably only been more light, but less of a shock to corals fish etc....
Bleaching could have also happened due to the change in lights. Compacts create a lot of heat which aids in water temps being high, more so over the T5s, and still dont produce as much usable light as t5s do. yeah there intence but i find a better amount of growth under t5s then i do under PC's... IMO i would have purchased a better t5ho unit to put of the tank, with 4 bulbs built into it. this would have cost the same if not less, depending on what your going for i guess, and would have probably only been more light, but less of a shock to corals fish etc....