Bleached out SPS

[bolo7735]

Two weeks ago I purchased a DFS Aussie Purple Horrida plus several other frags from Divers Den. I had acclimate this coral with the light. Everything was fine and had decent PE. Yesterday when I got home the coral bleached out completely. I did not see any bleaching on Sunday or any other day before. What can cause a coral to bleach that fast? I just don't want to make the same mistake again. This coral was expensive and it sucked that I lost it.

150 gallon SPS tank
2 x 400W MH 20K Radium
2 x Tunze 6205
I-Tech 400 Skimmer
Temp - 78-79 degree, running chiller
5 hour photo period, the rest of the day on Blue LED.

CA - 460
MAG - 1380
ALK - 9
Salinity - 1.026 (DD Salt)
I dose CA, ALK, and Mag daily.

[mike_cmu04]

what are your nitrates at? How and how long did you acclimate the coral to the light?

[bolo7735]

what are your nitrates at? How and how long did you acclimate the coral to the light?

Nitrates are near 0. Phosphate are a little high .045 but bio pellet never helped so now I am running RoWaPhos.

The first 3-4 days I have it on the bottom of my 30" tank. To observed to make sure everything is fine. Then I move it up to the middle of the tank. During the acclimation I run 2 hours shorter photo period and increase it little by little. By week and half later it was sitting on top of my rock work. It did fine without any issues. I have done this for my other frags too and they are fine. My previous frags that are growing great do not have any issues either. I have my Lumbenbright minis mounted 18" above water. Where the coral sat is another 20" under the water surface.

[bolo7735]

Anyone?

[gasman059]

Two days of aclimating?
perhaps weeks-- but then again corals do die for no apparent reason, its sometimes the nature of the beast.

[sedor]

My guess would be the light. You have very powerful lights and I would probably suggest acclimating them for around 2 weeks. In your situation it may be best to use the screen method where you lay down layers of screen and remove one every couple of days. It looks to me like your parameters are good so unless there was a huge swing it had to be the lights, especially if you have other SPS alive in the tank...

[bolo7735]

Two days of aclimating?
perhaps weeks-- but then again corals do die for no apparent reason, its sometimes the nature of the beast.

More then 2 days sir.