Acropora Bleached OVERNIGHT

[drumlizardo]

Hi all,

I've got a bit of an emergency here! Background: I bought these two acropora frags (one yellow and one reddish) attached to the same rock about three months ago. All was well until a few weeks ago I noticed the yellow frag had some tips turning white. I thought this might just be new growth, so I left it alone and decided to just watch the situation. Then, I looked yesterday, and the yellow frag had lost ALL of its color OVERNIGHT--it's now TOTALLY bleached, and had a slimy coating coming off of it, which I assume was the old Symbiodinium that had left the coral. AGH. Thinking this might be bleaching from too much light, I moved the coral from the middle of my tank to the bottom. But now, one day later, the reddish frag has had the same thing happen! I've attached some pictures--the previously-reddish frag is the one with slime coming off. I'm at a total loss about what to do. I did notice some green tube-like things (third picture) coming out of the rock when I first got the frags, and there *might* be more of them now--I thought they were just plastic at first, because the "rock" had some other weird plastic pieces sticking out, but I guess they could be some kind of parasite? Other than than, I have no ideas what to do. If this were light-related bleaching, it wouldn't have happened so fast, would it? ANY advice is hugely appreciated!

James

Tank information:
28-gallon JBJ Nano Cube
150 watts of LEDs—10,000 K white and royal blue
Two 425 GPH powerheads (malfunctioning as of a few weeks ago, getting more like 200 GPH each
Two 300 GPH return pumps
Protein skimmer
5-gallon water change every 2 weeks
Feed mysis shrimp, hard pellets, Phyto-Feast

Salinity: 1.024
Calcium: 360 (I know this is low; I haven't checked it in a few weeks--but this alone couldn't cause such dramatic bleaching, could it?
Alkalinity: 12.5
Magnesium:1280
Phosphate:
Temperature: 79 degrees F

Inhabitants:
2 clownfish
1 melanurus wrasse
1 red fire shrimp
1 red starfish
Turban, turbo, nassarius, and nerite snails
Acropora, montipora, birdsnest, zoanthids, blastomussa, ricordea, lithophyllum, leptoseris, pulsing Xenia, galaxea

 

[Robert_ellis]

Check water for stray voltage from pumps if they are malfunctioning and increase water changes to every week. By doing water changes you keep pollutants down while keeping anything a coral needs supplied as in calcium, etc... Stray voltage from a bad pump does weird things also.

 

[Sniperhank]

It is hard to tell if there is any tissue left or not. I have had SPS die overnight when the power went out and there was no flow in the tank for several hours. Check and see if there is any tissue remaining.
BTW, the green "tubes" is a macro algae.

 

[Liberty]

I'd say your alk is a little high and your cal is a little low
I have some acro fags, I put this one on its side. Growing like a plant that fell over
I try to keep the alk around 9 to 9,5 cal 430 meg 1350

 

[Ricksreef]

I'd say your alk is a little high and your cal is a little low
I have some acro fags, I put this one on its side. Growing like a plant that fell over
I try to keep the alk around 9 to 9,5 cal 430 meg 1350

Agree,acro's are very sensitive to water quality.You need to keep your cal level up.Also you need to make sure they have real good water flow at their location.You need to have them at the highest location in your tank with your lighting.