Bleaching Brain Coral

Do you guys think I should change from feeding Sally's Frozen Plankton to either Silversides or Krill?  In respect to feeding coral and anemone's alone.  Krill is too large from any of my fish to eat, but plenty of my coral and anemone eat up the krill in the plankton pretty well.  The krill and silversides have protein and fat content at least twice as high as the plankton.  

The four most important parameters a hobbyist should know about their tank are Temp, Salinity, Alk, and Ca. You wouldn't try to save money by using less salt would you? So why choose to skimp and not buy Alkalinity and Calcium test kits?
When you turn your back on it, low alkalinity will bite you in the butt.

I love CaribSea sand and I personally know the owner. An entire bag of AragAlive sand has less bacteria in it than 2 cups of your old LS. LS is much, much better because it not only has the bacteria but the live worms and bugs too.

All the worms and bugs in the old sand were a great benefit to the tank, but it helps to have a storm come around every once in a while to stir and refresh the sand. Coral and all kinds of invertebrates love the live detritus that gets stirred up into the water for them to eat.

The worms and bugs that grow in the sand are part of the biofiltration. Without that our tanks are like new and cannot support much of the life we would like to see. Please read what I wrote today in this thread: http://utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=56037

Phytoplankton is algae plankton. I guess that Marine snow could be considered plankton but because it's not alive it's technically not zooplankton or phytoplankton. Algae Paste is the best and most economical way to feed phyto to the entire tank. Phyto is the bottom of the food chain. It supports everything on the chain above it. A great place to get phytoplankton in Utah is http://brineshrimpdirect.com

Here's my the brain tonight immediately following a feeding.  I moved it further in to the shade as I've been doing a lot of research and find that a lot of people have great success with their brains at about 50PAR.  Though I don't have a PAR meter, I'm making a semi-educated guess that 50 PAR us relatively low.  I've also read that red species of these brains are collected in deep water, which runs concurrent with the low PAR requirement.  I'm starting to see the green coming back in the really bleached out section.  It's starting to fluoresce again under actinic.  Daily feedings and less light seem to be doing the trick.  Crazy how it seems that coral need light light light, and this one was saying NNNOOOOOO!!! It's too much.  If i'm crazy and it looks worse than it did last week, let me know.  Thanks!

Unfortunately mark, I have little information to provide you. The coral was purchased from an lfs 5 days after it came in. It was kept under metal halide at the lfs and generally speaking coral do better in my tank than the lfs at which I get them. A Duncan purchased at the same store same provider bought at the same time is already beginning to grow 2 new heads. Alkalinity in my tank is unknown, I'll try and get a test done this weekend and plan to buy a kit soon. Alk kits are expensive on their own! But based on all other coral health and growth it's likely safe to assume it is within desired parameters. When it came in to my old 65 the sand bed on which it was placed was old and established. About three years old. Full of bristle worms and thread worms, and nassarius vibex and Copepoda were plentiful. I washed the old sand was washed and set outside in a bucket with freshwater and I've noticed a large collection of some I identified transparent worms about 2 inches in length. I never noted and worms or parasites bothering this coral. It slowly declined in my 65, slow steady bleaching. This was 36" below my LEDs with 60' optics. It's been about 2 weeks now in the new system with an entirely new sand bed+1 quart of old sand. The sand I used was caribSea ocean direct live sand.  The tank receives almost no sunlight.  There is a blinded window to the parallel to the right of the tank and the brain is in the middle of the tank.  The window was perpendicular to the left of the old tank and some indirect light made it's way to the tank, this was apparent by a large amount of green algae that grew on the right wall of the tank.  The brain was position in the left 1/3 of this tank.  In my old tank feeding was irregular and I never fed it until I noticed it began bleaching.  As for phytoplankton I use MarineSnow.  On Tuesday I'll post a comparison photo from last week to see if we have any improvement from the daily feeding.  Thanks!
Here's the old tank shortly before the addition of the brain.  I placed it about 5" in front of the polyp rock left center back. 


Edited by SkylerS - April 20 2012 at 1:20pm

bstuver wrote: When I had LED it didn't matter if two things that required the same light were in the same position I had a frogspawn completely bleach and a hammer do just fine. I also had the two welsos basically right next to each other the one was amazing and the other did what you are experiencing.

Suggestions?

And notice the maze/favite on the far right of the tank?  It should have the same light requirement as the trachy and it's doing great...

It's been slow and constant.  I'm unsure if it's too much light or too little myself.  I never fed it for the first couple months so maybe that was it.  I'm experimenting with more light/less light but I haven't been consistent in position and feeding so I will leave it here and feed it daily and compare in a week.  If no improvement I will move it up and try again.  

Notice the small plug of digitata behind the clam?  I use that as my natural PAR meter.  If it starts to bleach out when at a given location then I know light is wanting.   It used to be a good 4 inches long but a rock fell and shattered it and all the little pieces ended up behind stuff in my old tank and died.  sad.  It's coming back though.  =)


Edited by SkylerS - April 18 2012 at 8:28pm

This tank is only about a week old, moved it over from a 1 year old 65.   The clam has been in the tank for over half a year and has grown 2 new chutes in it's shell since then.  The anemone has been there almost the whole year and has split 2 times since then.  The clam and anemone are about 10" down from the LED's with no optics.  Previously they were down about 20ish inches from the led's with 60' optics.  The brain started on the sand floor 36" down from the leds with 60' optics and is now 20" down from the led's with no optics.  The spot I'm thinking I could move it to would be about the same height as the clam and anemone (they live on the same rock) about 10-12 inches down.   I would like to get my PAR tested, just need to know someone.  

And the entire coral is bleached, it's just the parts that were green seem to have bleached the most, the red had hung in there very well, but no where near as vibrant as it used to be.  At night it still fluoresces well.  I'll get that pic up.