Suddenly pale acros?

[Odyssey350kc]

Hopefully some of you can chime in and help ease my mind.

 

I have battled a few issues in the last 6 months and made a few changes to my tank that may be causing my acros to do poorly.

 

1. Bryopsis. Dosed reef Flux roughly 6 weeks ago and completely eliminated the bryopsis.

 

2. Dinoflangelles- did a 2 day blackout and Dosed vibrant about 5 months ago completely eliminated them.

 

Since then everything in my tank has looked amazing! Acros coloring up. Great growth on all corals.

 

Earlier this week I noticed the dinos starting to pop up again as well as a good amount of either bryopsis or hair algae on some rock and 1 of my acro frags. So I decided to do another 2 day blackout and add reef Flux again.

Carbon/gfo bag removed and Skimmer was shut off as per instructions for reef flux.

 

I also decided to change my lighting ratios and reduce my lighting from 13 hours to around 10 to try and reduce algae. And keep this from being a constant issue.

 

The day after the blackout all 4 of my acropora frags are looking like crap. Poor polyp extension and all look very pale. It has been 3 days now and they look the same if not worse.

 

So 2 nights ago I reverted my lights to their last setting, and added a small amount of purit. Just in case it is something else.

 

All the other corals still look great. Is there anything else I should do, or just give it time? I have listed my parameters below for the past 2 days. I realize the phosphate is quite high but I attributed that to the skimmer being off for 3 days.

 

[blasterman]

Acros being acros.

 

Looking at your numbers the issue is almost certainly low nitrates that have declined due to all product dosing.  Dinos love nitrate levels < 5ppm. 

 

Try to get your nitrates in the 10 range and this should improve things.

[Murphs_Reef]

Yeah the nitrate numbers are a bit low. IDK maybe the phosphate is a tiny touch on the higher side but not crazy. 

[blasterman]

Phosphate isn't a big deal if its been in that range. If acros don't like your phosphate level they will just flip you the bird and RTN. 

 

Yeah....most people are so focused on other things they dont watch nitrate. Ive learned over the years to keep it around 10. 

[jservedio]

Also, in addition to the current dino/hair algae situation, you mentioned you had more dinos and bryopsis 6 weeks ago. If you quickly eliminated a ton of bryopsis, the amount of N, P, and other organics in the water column probably would have been all over the place. A few day snapshot really doesn't tell you anything when it comes to acros - what would be really helpful is knowing the before, during, and immediately after the first round of bryopsis and dinos.

 

Acros in particular generally don't respond immediately to changes in anything (other than RTN) and any response you get out of them can come a few weeks to months after the initial stress, even if it's no longer present. I wouldn't be surprised if once you have everything under control and the acros start coming back to their normal color, they pale or brown (depending on the nutrient situation) once again in another 2-6 weeks when they respond to the most recent fluctuations from the dinos and hair algae.

[Odyssey350kc]

15 hours ago, blasterman said:

Phosphate isn't a big deal if its been in that range. If acros don't like your phosphate level they will just flip you the bird and RTN. 

 

Yeah....most people are so focused on other things they dont watch nitrate. Ive learned over the years to keep it around 10. 

My phosphates were actually closer to .03 earlier in the week but I'm not really sure what normal is since I wasn't testing while everything looked awesome. Im gonna try and test a bit more when things are looking good so I know where to keep my levels.

[jservedio]

8 minutes ago, Odyssey350kc said:

My phosphates were actually closer to .03 earlier in the week but I'm not really sure what normal is since I wasn't testing while everything looked awesome. Im gonna try and test a bit more when things are looking good so I know where to keep my levels.

If your phosphate jumped by more than 3x over the course of the week, that'll do it. I bet it was fluctuating even more during your bryopsis and dino battle weeks ago as well.

 

Nutrient stability is just as important as alkalinity stability with acros. You can have high phosphates, low (but not approaching zero) phosphates, or somewhere in the middle, but they can't be fluctuating all over. Stability is way more important than the actual number.

 

To really beat dinos, you have to have high phosphate and nitrates so they can be out competed, but you should still aim to keep it as stable as possible and dose P and N as needed to keep it from moving.