Moon Coral Bleaching

[bderos]

What do I do? Can anyone tell me what I should do when a coral bleaches itself? I've had it for 3 weeks and I haven't moved it. About 5 days ago brown stringy stuff was ejected. Can anyone help. Thanks.

[Justin74]

Sounds like it could be a few things. But the brown stingy stuff you refer to sounds like it was expelling its zooxanthellae. Hence the bleaching your witnessing now. Usually this happens when a coral is coming from an intensely lit system(or just brighter) than the one the coral is moved to. It does this to compensate for the lower light levels and the zooxanthellae that is not needed for the lower light levels, so it expells them. Same can hold true for a system that is too bright, but usually that process happens much faster with more detriment to the coral, than not enough.

My suggestion is to make sure water is not the issue in anyway, so you can focus on the main issues. Food and photosynthesis. Right now since it's bleaching, it wont be able to utilize the nutrients from photosynthesis, and if left alone may eventually starve. This makes manual feeding "spot feeding" very important, and basically your job now with said coral is to slowly nurse it back to health color and vitality. This can take a month or two. Small meaty foods like chopped krill or mysis NO BRINE SHRIMP! We've come to understand that there about the nutritional value of a rice cake. Also periodicall supplements of phyto, rotifers, and or cyclopeeze will help speed this recovery. Good luck, you got your work cut out for you

-Justin