my live rock is fading!!

[juice28]

im slowly building up my live rock in my tank(its expensive out here about 8.50-10.00a lb) i recently did a water change and i"thought" the water was fine, actually my girl did it while I was at work and she used regular tap now my live rock is starting to fade and turning white..i know there is a problem but im not sure what it is, how can i fix it?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Could be a number of things. Did she mix the saltwater up to the right salinity? Is this a recent thing, or did this water change happen several weeks ago?

As usual, in order to really help you out, we're going to need some numbers like salinity, temperature, pH... that sort of thing. My first thought would be your calcium is too low, causing the coralline algae to bleach out. If you have calcium and alkalinity readings, that would help rule that out. The water change issue just could be a coincidence.

 

[kerryB]

Could it be the fact that they used tap water instead of RO water? im not sure but i thought may be this could be the reason.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

It may or may not. It's not really clear the time line between that water change and when things went white.

 

[juice28]

I did some research and i read that coraline algae will die(turn white) and then regrow with a diffrent algae depending on the lighting it has i have a 47 high tank and i got the rock out of a very shalow tank..im noticing blue coloration and some lightpik starting to spread over it now so im asuming that might be it.. hopefully luckilly i dont have anything in it really so im not losing anything

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Once coralline is exposed to air... for even a brief period... it will bleach or die. So if this rock was just transferred from another tank, that could well be the case. But having water parameters would help rule out other things.

 

[juice28]

yea, i have to buy anothe kit, my little girl got hold of it so needless to say its no longer functional lol but as soon as i get some numbers ill post them, im going to take a sample to my local store, they do testing also so that will give me something to work with faster