olsenshouse
Well-known member
What causes SPS coral to fade to white? Not dying but losing color if all parameters are good?
SPS Fading
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tamarindthai
Well-known member
not enough food,,maybe
olsenshouse
Well-known member
So SPS can get too much light? I have them probably mid to high level under 250w MH's. I feed 2 to 3 times a week. Coral Frenzy. Is there something else I should be feeding them? Will the color come back? What is AEFW? Thanks for the help.
Krish
RF STAFF
Sorry to hear about your troubles...If you can, give us a bit more info on your setup. Also, I will move the threads to Kevin's forum where he specializes in SPS's. 
Gordy
Coral first fish #2
Gordy
Coral first fish #2
mcoomer
Who's your daddy?!?
Are you having trouble with a single coral or several in your tank? If it's a single coral I'd try placing it lower in the tank for now. I have a TCN Royal Blue Tenuis that I placed way up in my rock structure because I'd always found info that said it had high light and flow requirements. Coral looked great for a while then began to show some faint bleaching on the rim of some coralites. I left it there for another week and saw that it was getting worse so I put it midway down in the tank and it's coloring back up now.
AEFW is another problem, and one that I hope you don't have. Acropora Eating Flatworms will eat the flesh from your corals and spread to other corals in your tank, eating as they go, until you have nothing left to sustain them. Do you suspect that you have them? If so, pull any suspect corals out and take a close look at them. The flatworms can be difficult to see but the egg clusters they lay are easy to spot. You can also see patterns in the flesh of the coral that will indicate that something has been gnawing on it. Take a look at this once beautiful Purple Nana that I picked up at a LFS and you get a good idea of what the eggs look like.
You can clearly see the line at the base of the coral that shows healthy tissue and bare skeleton. These little buggers were working their way right up to the tips of the coral. They may be sensitive to lots of light because it appears that they stayed to the back and undersides of the coral. The front of that coral looked fine and I only discovered the problem when I did because I was moving my stuff into a new tank. If you find these on a coral or several you need to pull them out of your tank and dip them. I used CoralRX to treat and it worked wonders. The directions say to mix 30 drops per 1 gallon of water and dip the corals for 5-10 minutes. I did this every day for the first week, every other day the second week, 3 days a week the third, and then weekly for the next several weeks. After you dip the coral, use a toothpick (or similar) to gently scrape at the egg clusters to loosen them, rinse the coral in a container of water from the tank, give it a second rinse, then put it on a frag rack, preferably in a QT if you have one. I did this for about two months and haven't had any other problems. I was able to save several nice tips from that coral and it's regrowing nicely now.
Mike
AEFW is another problem, and one that I hope you don't have. Acropora Eating Flatworms will eat the flesh from your corals and spread to other corals in your tank, eating as they go, until you have nothing left to sustain them. Do you suspect that you have them? If so, pull any suspect corals out and take a close look at them. The flatworms can be difficult to see but the egg clusters they lay are easy to spot. You can also see patterns in the flesh of the coral that will indicate that something has been gnawing on it. Take a look at this once beautiful Purple Nana that I picked up at a LFS and you get a good idea of what the eggs look like.
You can clearly see the line at the base of the coral that shows healthy tissue and bare skeleton. These little buggers were working their way right up to the tips of the coral. They may be sensitive to lots of light because it appears that they stayed to the back and undersides of the coral. The front of that coral looked fine and I only discovered the problem when I did because I was moving my stuff into a new tank. If you find these on a coral or several you need to pull them out of your tank and dip them. I used CoralRX to treat and it worked wonders. The directions say to mix 30 drops per 1 gallon of water and dip the corals for 5-10 minutes. I did this every day for the first week, every other day the second week, 3 days a week the third, and then weekly for the next several weeks. After you dip the coral, use a toothpick (or similar) to gently scrape at the egg clusters to loosen them, rinse the coral in a container of water from the tank, give it a second rinse, then put it on a frag rack, preferably in a QT if you have one. I did this for about two months and haven't had any other problems. I was able to save several nice tips from that coral and it's regrowing nicely now.
Mike
kevinpo
Expert
Hello,
The two top causes of SPS corals to expel their Zooxanthellae rapidly are heat spikes and sudden increases of light intensity or spectrum change. Other things can cause bleaching but most of the time it is the above. The coral can recover with proper care. I place the coral in a low light moderate flow area. The coral will turn brown at first but will recover in 90 days or so.
Regards,
Kevin
The two top causes of SPS corals to expel their Zooxanthellae rapidly are heat spikes and sudden increases of light intensity or spectrum change. Other things can cause bleaching but most of the time it is the above. The coral can recover with proper care. I place the coral in a low light moderate flow area. The coral will turn brown at first but will recover in 90 days or so.
Regards,
Kevin
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