SPS UV Exposure Accident

[CRASHFIREJOE]

When I got home last night I found one of my 140gal. tanks 400w mogal base lamps broken. The lamp looks like one of my fish splashed some water on the lamp causing the UV outer shield of the single end lamp to crack. Oops. In turn this crack aprox 1/2" exposed my corals to UV light for an unknown amount of time during yesterdays light cycle. Needless to say one side of my tank looks fairly bleached out with extreme loss of color and very little polyp extension if any at all with the SPS directly under the lamp looking already half white.
To top it all off I today is the beginning of a 48hr Shift at the fire house so the suspense is high at what I will be coming home to on Sunday. I already have a batch of water mixing for another water change when I get home. My charcoal was replaced last week. As of this morning all water parameters are still just great! I don’t expect them to be when I get home
Has anyone here had this problem?
Any chances of recovery?
Any side effects I should be looking out for?

Thanks

Joe

 

[morgan]

there more then one type of UV light spectrum
corals do contain pigments that block certain uv rays so hopefully the expouser wasnt to long or to servier for the corals to bounce back
i keep corals in direct sunlight so im sure there getting some uv rays hopefully not to extreme

 

[apollothesun]

sorri to hear of the mishap. to be honest, ive never seen, read or heard of any coral turn white back to their original color. if you can, frag the coral pieces that are healthy and see if you can save some that way.

 

[kevinpo]

Hello,
Some of the corals will recover but it will take up to 6 months. In your size tank I don't think water quality will become an issue. The corals that bleach white (expel their zooxanthellae) can recover although they might become a different color. Also the growth forms can change for quite some time before returning to their original shape. A lot depends on the size of the coral colonies with larger ones having shaded areas will be somewhat protected. The upper branches may die but they can be trimmed back later.

HTH,
Kevin

 

[CRASHFIREJOE]

Thanks for your replies. I had an update from my wife since I am still at work. All of the smaller frag colonies 8 total 2"-4" completely turned white as of this afternoon. The larger colonies as kevin stated turned white on the sides directly facing the lamp with the shaded sides still having some polyp extension. I will assess the damage more myself tomorrow morning and hopefully frag what is salvageable.
As far as the water quality my tank has aprox 180 gal of water with the sump included IMO allowing me a little more grace. But all the same I will retest the water tomorrow and do a change as necessary.

 

[KrautBurner]

it's been a year and a half,

how long did the recoverey take?

 

[CRASHFIREJOE]

I ended up having a total loss to aprox six SPS colonys and aprox 75% Loss to 8 other SPS corals. It was an upside down v pattern of total destruction. I have since got rid of my cheep reflectors and made some DIY luminarc reflectors with glass shields.

 

[ac7av]

Wow that just sucks!
I wonder if you can buy UV shielded glass to put over the lights to protect the tank from the outer glass shield brakeage? It seems like I herd this story before or maybe it was yours since it was some time ago.

 

[kevinpo]

Hello,
What brand of bulb was it?

Kevin