Does carbon bleach your corals ? (Kent carbon recall)

[Casey8]

Hey Daniella, I was about to get the receipt, pictures of the bleached corals, and my husband is ready to go back to LFS (where we returned the carbon) to get a little sample and the bar code tomorrow ... we were ready to make a complain to the Kent company tomorrow ... and guess what, my halides were turned off for the day and now the T5s have been turned on for 2 hours ... then all of a sudden when I passed by, I see all my bleached corals have slight color on them. I stopped and looked closely, I see the polyps are starting to open here and there. All the faded corals are gettting more colors under the T5s tonight. I couldn't believe what I have seen. I am so excited ! They are coming back to life tonight, Daniella ! You were right, good thing I didn't throw them away. Will see what they will look like under the metal halides tomorrow.

[Myka]

Casey, I would suggest you keep the halides turned off until the color comes back. The color in the corals protects them from the damaging effect of UV rays. Putting halide light over badly bleached corals could kill them.

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by Myka

Casey, I would suggest you keep the halides turned off until the color comes back. The color in the corals protects them from the damaging effect of UV rays. Putting halide light over badly bleached corals could kill them.

Mika, How long do I need to leave the halides off, or do I just need to cut hours back like daniella ?

[daniella3d]

The ideal would be to use the T5HO if you have anything else than actinic, and if your T5HO are just actinic, then put egg crate or something to screen the MH and start with just a few hours per day and rise that slowly as the coral get back their colors.

If you only have actinic, that's not enough to sustain the coral. Also feeding them amino acid and zooplankton will help them recover because since they are deprived of zooxanthellae, they need other food source for now.

Originally Posted by Casey8

Mika, How long do I need to leave the halides off, or do I just need to cut hours back like daniella ?

[Casey8]

I will follow your instructions, thank you daniella.

[Casey8]

Please read Kent reef carbon recall on J&L web site.

[whatcaneyedo]

Wow they've done it again. Does anyone else remember ~8 years ago when they produced the bad batch(s) of salt? I do...

[daniella3d]

That's great news. Some of mine are starting to do the same thing as well. I lost 2 frags of acropora, the rest seem that it's going to come back.

Though I lost all my xenias, all my blue photosynthetic sponges and all my pink digitatas plus a few frags of paly and zoanthids. Really wierd how selective this was.

Just make sure you don't put the ligth too long for a few weeks to les them recover and stop them from bleaching more. As long as they have polyps, they usually come back.

I am using the halide for 5 hours per day now. I don't have anything else that can provide for my coral because the other tubes are just PC actinic and can't sustain corals, but seem that just cutting the amount of time by a few hours is preventing further bleaching. I went from 9 hours of MH to 5, so cut it about half for now.

Originally Posted by Casey8

Daniella ! You were right, good thing I didn't throw them away. Will see what they will look like under the metal halides tomorrow.