Saving a bleached coral

[Severum]

I have a large acro colony that is bleached pretty bad. Its bottom end is actually dead be about 70 percent of it still has some polyp extension. Can I bring this guy back from the brink of death or is it just a matter of time?

I am doing bi-weekly 30 gallon water changes (60 this past weekend actually), dosing alk and cal via dosing pumps with alk at 9 and cal at 420.

[kole18]

If your running carbon & Gfo I would suggest to shut it off for a week & do a massive water change to replenish your water. I've got my fully colony if acropora abrotendines i'd break into half didn't run my reactor for a week did a lot water change & it's back again. The corals are so stress & you may wanna shut of your day light too for a day I'd noticed of doing this kind of technique it helps your coral to relieve man I hope I did help a bit happy reef keeping:)

[cn]

I would keep doing couple more big water changes (>30%) and frag the coral. You don't want to keep the dead tissue gettilng rotten in your tank. Also monitoring the parameters and avoiding any big change in alk & calcium.

[kole18]

I would shut off my reactor or dosing pump & lower a bit my cal , alk as well. Keep your day light off atleast a day & also turn off your power head maybe run single power head not direct to corals. Frag it too that has been bleached. My ambrontondis sp. I ended up fragging entire colony it did stop from rtn I did also dip too just incase there's afew. It's stress for few days but then some came back starting encrusted on my LR's . Just let you know not all corals does survive in this situation I had same problem before never get to survive due to that corals really stress out, but on this case i manage to keep half my colony alive the only isn't good I've lost entire colony & it sucks:(.

[Hookup]

i usually keep em till they are dead... sometimes they come back.. sometimes they done... if you toss em, they dont come back for sure...

[redbelly]

did you end up saving this piece?

[Severum]

I shut off GFO and bio pellets and my tank was overwhelmed by hair algae. It really took over the acro and a large birdnest. The acro is totally gone, though I think I have a frag or two of it in my frag tank. 

The birdsnest is in real rough shape with algae growing deep in its branches. I tried breaking affected parts of it off but I can't get to the really deep pockets. I think its just a matter of time for this guy.

Its pretty sad to lose two huge colonies that grew from 1 inch frags.

Bio pellets and GFO has been back on for several weeks and all other tank inhabitants are doing great.

[redbelly]

Are nitrates a problem in the tank?

If you dont have nitrates, biopellets dont work.

Have you read the biopellet article in the Jan/feb 2012 issue of Coral Mag?
They postulate that one of the potential reasons that biopellets dont work for some people is that the heterotropic (spelling?) bacteria may or may not be present in all tanks and at the time of the article they were not aware of any such bacteria on the market place.
Julian Sprung actually already had it, it just was not to market yet and launched around the same time the article was published.

Either way, without nitrates biopellets dont work.


There is obviously a PO4 issue though and a large one if the GHA came back that strong.