Bleaching flowerpot coral

[Alentino]

i have one brown flowerpot whose polyps are starting to bleach more and more lately, but the strange thing is that they are still fully extended and are still waving in the current. other flowerpots are doin fine, please enlighten.

[jazzben81]

care to give the parameters of ur tank?

[Alentino]

erm let me see....

NH4 - 0

NO2 - 0

NH3 - <20mg/l

depth - 2.5 ft

2 x 150watt MH

2 x atinic blue PL

temp - 28 C

is insufficient lighting the cause?

[jazzben81]

definitely not the case.. unless u put ur flowerpot on the sandbed...

but they are kinda hardy to me...

there was once when i accidentally 'squash' it while aquascaping my LR

more than half of the 'polyps' are gone leaving lots of 'holes'.

within a month they all grow back and waving for more food . heheh

anyway are ur flowerpot newly introduced?

care to share a pic?

[FuEl]

erm let me see....

NH4 - 0

NO2 - 0

NH3 - <20mg/l

depth - 2.5 ft

2 x 150watt MH

2 x atinic blue PL

temp - 28 C

is insufficient lighting the cause?

I think you meant NO3 less than 20...not NH3..

The lighting seems sufficient to me..you should see the type of lighting I am keeping my jewel goniopora under...and yet it still expands into a balloon...The longest extended polyp I measured was 16cm.

Sometimes corals bleach when they are suddenly exposed to a level of lighting they are not used to. Insufficient lighting for will not cause ur coral to bleach...my guess is that your light literally burned the zooxanthellae out of ur goniopora...try reducing the light level over the goniopora with a shade. See if it helps.

[Alentino]

Thanks for the advise guys jazzben i'll be takin a pic of it soon and then i'll show it to you. it has been there for like 4 months already. yup i meant it as NO3 so if i relocate it to a more shallow area will the color return to the polyps? Gonioporas are really attractive.

[Achilles Tang]

Gonios are attractive but they are also acknowledged as an extremely difficult to keep coral. Most don't last more than a few months before dying. They are not hardy and require specific conditions to thrive (which will usually bring down a reef tank in a few months!)... ie. too clean a tank is not extremely good for them as they require lots of dissolved nutrients and planktonic material as in the wild... they are most often found in silty and lagoonal areas.

[jazzben81]

thanks for the info AT.

im not using a protein skimmer currently...

perhaps thats my my gonio recovered very fast by absorbing the nutrients in the water...

the time when i accidentally damage it,when i was aquascaping my LR...

more than half of its polyps are gone...

less than a month later...

they all grow back...therefore draws to my conclusion tt it was hardy to me (my specific specimen).

of coz i read on the net tt it is very hard to survive in home aquaria. usually living only for a few months...

[Achilles Tang]

True true... actually many marine creatures do better in species only/specific habitat tanks.

Like how some LPS fare poorly in SPS tanks due to the increase in water circulation and nutrient-poor water that SPS thrives on... and how SPS will suffer when mixed with soft corals due to chemical warfare... and how some corals like elegance, gonios, dendros do much better in lagoonal conditions tank setups where little/no skimming is done.

[Alentino]

hmm.... dissolved nutrients, interesting.... i keep Gonios, galaxia, moon coral (favia), plate coral, fungia and clams in my tank, is this a harmful mixture?

[Achilles Tang]

Sounds ok.

A tank with a heavy dissolved nutrient load will benefit some corals but the reefer will have a hard time trying to stave off nuisance algae overgrowth which make a tank very very ugly.

Sensitive corals may not take too kindly to such algae overgrowth. I have lost a good many corals like my bubble and sea fans to hair algae when they decide to cling on and overgrow over their branches and exposed skeleton.

[jazzben81]

no wonder i find some sort of hairy thing on my sea fan...

hahah

but my trochus and cerith snails are working very hard to keep my algae and diatoms in check.

i also place my sea fan under more current to 'blow' off any detritus on my sea fan.

can u imagine a 20 cent trochus and 10 cent cerith has grow to a bigger than 50 cent trochus and 20 cent cerith in less than 2 weeks???

no my prob. is not the algae growth...

but cleaning the tank glass everyday coz of the snail tracks on my glass!!!