Hi everyone! Thanks for taking the time to help us through this! It's comforting to know that folks here are a willing resource.
The lighting is comprised of a corallife power compact 50/50 at 96 watts, 18 watt actinic in the plastic light canopy that came with the tank and finally two Rio lunar blue LED's (20 LED's in total between both fixtures, wattage unknown). The 50/50 light is run for 6 hours per day as daylight, the actinic comes on prior/post as sun up and sun set for 9 hours per day and the lunar blue lights are left on for 24 hours. This lighting scheme has been running for 6 months now. They have been in the same spot for 2 months now (maybe a little more). They used to be a very intense green colour and quite attractive. Now they are a drab brown colour and not attractive at all, especially with the white colouring that is occurring.
What would we look for to determine if this is bleaching? We do not have an an algae problem and would consider increasing the lighting duration if that would help; any ideas?
We feed live phyto sparingly three times daily (10 drops at each feeding). We also feed mysis, brine and cylopeze twice weekly as a general dosing for all the tank critters. (Blood worm is sometimes included in the feeding just to add variety). Once all of the critters appear to have satisfied their hunger we target feed our corals. Our corals clearly respond to the food in the tank water column and to the target feeding.
We are consistent and stay on top of weekly 10% water changes. Our parameters are; Temperature - 76, Salinity - 35, Ammonia - 0, Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 0, Ph - 8.08, Alkalinity - 2.5, Phosphate - 0, Calcium 420, Magnesium - 1500.
Our main tank has 2 trumpet lps corals, 1 montiporis, 1 colony of green clove polyps, 6 ricordia florida, 11 striped mushrooms, two zoa colonies, 1 coco worm, 1 - 3 dot damsel, 1 harbour gobie, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 porcelain crab, many different hermit crabs (to many to count), and to many astria snails to count as well a few margarita snails and several nissarius snails. Our water turn over is 50 X per hour. We also keep a bag of purigen in our overflow box that is monitored and regenerated if required. Other than a slow dusting of algae on the glass that we clean off with a mag float 2 or 3 times per week (There really isn't much algae to actually see, but one can notice it if you look along the inside of the glass, so we give it a quick brushing with a mag float and consider this as part of the filter feeding routine. We suspect that it is actually caused by/or from the phyto and not something that we mind.)
The montiporis is growing and we are using that as an indicator that we have sufficient lighting. We consider our tank to have moderate lighting and moderate flow.
We run 50/50 lighting opposite the display tank on our fuge as well as a filter sock to keep down bubbles and to mechanically remove particulate suspension. The sock is changed every 3'rd day. The fuge has live sand, live rock, cheato, red and blue leg hermits, peppermint shrimp, ghost shrimp, astrea snails, nissarius snails, chitons, asterina stars, bristle worm, barnacles, tunicates, squirts, two mithrax crabs and a watchman gobie.
We are using the fuge live sand and live rock as additional bacterial filtration and the cheato for nutrient export. The cheato is growing and we thin it out every 4 - 5 weeks when it begins to use up most of the fuge water column. Little critters are reproducing and thriving in the cheato that we think are copepods and such.
We have noticed that our damsel hovers in the main tank water column close to the return and appears to be feeding throughout the day. The gobie in the fuge can be seen feeding in the fuge water column. We believe that they are eating the critters that are reproducing in the cheato and take this as an indication that things are doing well.
Sorry for the babbling, but we we're trying to provide a bigger and more detailed picture of how our system is running in the hopes that something may point out what is effecting the zoa's.
Thanks for all your help!
Dave & Tracy
