Corals bleaching!

I left for San Diego on Thursday night and did notice my fuzzy shrooms weren't looking so hot. I thought to myself they are a finicky coral and told my friend watching my tank too keep an eye on them and the rest of the livestock. Well she called me the next day and said the fuzzies are looking worse and some of the polyps seem to be closed or lighter in color. So the oh @#$t button is hit and I'm back in the car heading home(3 hour drive). On the way home I'm going through my head whats wrong with my tank. The first thing that came to my mind was I just recharged my Purigen, using bleach like it says on the bottle, but the thing I did not do was use a dechlorinator when rinsing it off. I let it sit in my RO/DI water for 12 hours, rinsed it and let it sit for another 12 hours and let it dry in the sun and put it back in the tank. So I'm thinking that damn Purigen is leaching chlorine in the tank. Next thing I get home and see the corals first hand, they seem to be a little bleached, just my shrooms and some zoas. SPS all looks fine,clams, open brain, lobo..... etc. So its just the zoas and my fuzzy shrooms, so the next thing that pops in my head was earlier in the week I changed out my GE 6500k bulb out for an ATI aquablue special. I thought maybe the corals were adjusting to the Kelivin difference? It sucks I was suppose to pick up a killer frag pack from Aqua SD but that got put off until this problem is found!

 

To me this doesn't sound to life-threatening. I have hairy shrooms too and they can be moody. I wouldn't sweat it too much if everything else is looking good. Your tank might be too clean from what you have done for those shrooms. What I mean, is that I have noticed that when my SPS are happy (super clean water).. the shrooms are 'ok' - but when the water is a bit old, the shrooms are happier. This is just my experience, but if the shrooms are the only thing nutty then don't worry too much.

 

Alright yeah I pretty much hit the panic button. I am going to do a WC tonight and hopefully all is well in a few days. The zoas have lighten up a bit so that has me a little worried.

 

added anything new to the tank recently?

 

Just that Purigen that I recharged that I should have dechlorinated. But It did soak in RO/DI for about 24 hours and dried in the sun for about 8 hours, so I don't know if thats it or the new light bulb I added to my t5 fixture, went from a GE6500k to an ATI Aquablue special, so there is a big difference in Kelvin, in that.

 

oh sorry, I was meaning livestock wise. Did you add any new corals recently?

 

The thing that I can get out of this is that when you changed the kelvin of the bulb, you changed the apearance of the corals, so they don't look like they did.
Zoanthids and corallimorphs tend to look a bit different when your water has elevated levels of nutrients and when it doesn't, like after performing a water change.
Much of this has to do with nutrient reduction, increase or decrease in PAR/PUR values associated with dissolved organics(gelbsoff), salinity levels etc.
I wouldn't sweat the condition of the shrooms like Matt said!!!

 

Change is probably from the Purigen removing nutrients. The bulbs are a trade off on PAR since the GE is used.

 

No new corals recently

Yeah I'm hoping its nothing major.

Yeah it seems to be all the areas on the corals that were dark/brown. Like the fuzzy shrooms still have all their green, they just don't have the brown color on the base of the coral. Same thing with the zoas the fuzzy edges were brown on some and now have turned almost white. Odd stuff...

 

Try changing the bulb back for a few days if you are super worried.