Sectional Bleaching....Reasoning???

[Racenrich]

Hey all...i thought id post a few photos to see if anyone has any ideas as why this is happening to one of my prized, 3yrs old now, coral.

Insight:
The coral was touching a ricordia rock for abit when i noticed it bleaching in that area...I moved the ric rock and broke off the two white branches that were effected....its been two weeks now and the bleaching is still going?

Did the ric poison my SPS? is there any way to save this without hacking it to pieces?

Couple shots for ya....all three taken yesterday. And as you see the coral looks great except........

Any ideas or imputs?
Thanks in advance.
Rich K.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v671/xcmtbkr/DSC07337.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v671/xcmtbkr/DSC07338.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v671/xcmtbkr/DSC07339.jpg

[Serioussnaps]

Move it completely away from the ric...i see you moved it to keep it from touching...but move it AWAY away from it. I would give it a few days to see if the recession stops. It isn't "bleaching" rather receding. If it doesnt stop or it speeds up or keeps receding i would frag it up. Move it, give it good water and time.

[GTR]

Is something eating it?

SteveU

[Racenrich]

Thanks for the note....yeah i have moved the ric rock away for now....the coral has nice flow and good light....i hope it survives.

GT...not sure on that....i haven't caught a culprit chewing on it!

I'll ya posted.

RK

[GTR]

Just the way it looks in the picture it doesn't really seem to be unhappy overall. I'd look for signs of tissue irratation above the tissue loss. The fact that the skeleton is still all white in those pictures tells me the tissue loss was fairly rapid. In colonies that have tissue loss from the base up that's normally a slow process and the algae follows along with it leaving multi-tone skeleton.

SteveU