new birdsnest tips bleaching?

[errand]

I have gotten my first sps, a birdsnest. My tank is young, 7 months old, but I have some form of wild orange sps growing well on a zoa rock, so I wanted to try another one, right at the top of my tank on the rockwork. It's kind of yellowish and pink/purple. It's also high enough that the giant snails can't blunder all over.

I've had it for 2 weeks, so it's early days.

The tips have gotten white and fluffy though - I had a tank disaster last week that I mentioned in the beginner forum, whereby the sump stopped working and the heater blew up, and nitrates were quite high for a couple of days after everything came back on. This week I see the tips are, well, white and very fluffy - its really hard with my phone camera but pictures below.

I'm used to my LPS, zoas and nems by now I can tell when they're not right, but I have no idea about sps and they scare me a bit. The fluff looks like a dense carpet of little polyps, smaller than the regular purple ones - are they shrinking and dying off?? I have him in high flow, high light, and have fed reef roids 3 times in the past 2 weeks.

calcium is 490

alk 7.0

ph 8.3

mag 1200

salinity 1.027

nitrates .04 [i think, hard to tell from the colored slides]

ammonia 0.009 [seneye]

temp 25.87

light ai prime hd about 14 inches directly above the birdsnest

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

Grow tips . Nothing wrong with it . It’s a good sign that’s it’s growing 

[errand]

Oh wow cool, that's great! So it didn't get too freaked out by last week. I have read that birdsnest are a good beginner sps, that's why I chose it, I'm glad he's happy for now - just got to keep him this way, thanks a lot 🙂

[Tuan’s Reef]

Here’s mine. White and fluffy 🙂