Our LR is turning white,We dont know if we're doing everything right

[SteveNMegz]

Hello
we have currently started a saltwater tank and have just added Fiji LR. It's been in the tank for about a week now and we are noticing that some parts of the LR are turning White. We read that you should brush these parts off and some of it was a film and some of it was the rock itself and we can't brush it off. What does this mean?? Also some parts of the rock are turning a light brown color.Is this part of the curing process?? Also there is a film ontop of our water..We were told to wait it out and then drop some snails in next week is this normal???

[m2434]

Is it less than 3 months old? New live rock tends to do this slowly, because coralline is fairly sensitive to lighting. Usually I find it dies of and gets replaced by different colors.

But of course I should ask the usual questions, what type of light?
what color coralline?
what are your parameters?
How old?
etc...

[hdodd]

Am no expert, so for what it may be worth. Started a 125 7 weeks ago. Put in 160 pounds of tonga fusion lr. Prior to introducing, literally took hose and blasted it as clean as I could. Rock became white as in bleached look. As part of the cycle, algae of many sorts covered rock and janitors were introduced 2 weeks ago. The result was cleaning of much of the rock and a bleached look again. Varying colors are now appearing as tank continues to mature. Parameters have been good now for 3 weeks. Algae subsiding and parts of rock still show a white or bleached look. As many, many have said, the process is slow and things do change. If your rock was cured or cleaned off well prior to introduction, then it may be a simple issue of "what happens" as in my case. Good luck.

[o.c.d.]

I take it that the pink and purple part are what's turning white.m2434 is totally right very sensitive stuff.Also if your water is off it will die very quickly Calcium and Alk are very important to keep stable for good coralline growth.

[o.c.d.]

hdodd when ever you clean LR scrub it in a bucket of SW unless you somehow have a hoze full of SW. Tap water will kill your LR and cause more die off.

[SteveNMegz]

The tank is only 2 weeks old, first week we only had live sand and the water, 2nd week we added 31lbs of live rock (65gallon tank)we will eventually get more, for now we're just using NO T5 10k and atinic (not plannin on corals yet), quite a bit of the rock has turned a cool lime green colour (looks like coraline), but now some spots seem to be white (and its spreading). should also mention that LPS told us the live rock still had 2-3 weeks to cure.
Thanks guys!

[o.c.d.]

If your still curing than your lights are off right. and no sunlight hits the tank.It sound like a typical algae bloom witch needs light. Do you have a skimmer? and are you using R/O water?

[Bandsaw]

I would just be patient right now. Your tank is still cycling.

Coraline tends to go through these cycles as your lights change. When I upgraded to 150W MH from CF, all of coralline on the walls of tank bleached. About four or five months later, it started coming back. Now the walls of the tank that I let coraline grow are a nice color again and I have to scrape the other glass every week.

Same thing happened when I upgraded from NO to Compacts.

Also, coraline requires good Alkalinity and Calcium levels to grow. I would give your tank some time to finish the cycle. Then check your Alk, Ca, and Mg levels. Even though you are not keeping corals, the coraline still require these parameters to be in good conditions as does shrimp and other critters.

[MTB]

Sounds like typical die off. The rock should get more colors soon. The die off in my tank lasted about 3 weeks before the colors started coming back. Give it a little more time and see if it turns around for you.

Also scrubing those spots with a brush will help a bit.

[Sk8r]

Temperature needs to stay below 85. If much above 80---problem. 85 is reason to worry, and can cause rock/coral bleaching. Try to stabilize temp to around 80 give or take two degrees.