Live rock and shells are turning white!??

Hello,

If I hadnt seemed to break two digital cameras in two weeks time I would take pictures to show what I am going to try to describe, but I cant. Anyways, I have noticed over the past week or so that all of my live rock seems to be getting white patches almost like it was bleached, or cleaned really really well. I thought it was just areas that my crabs and snails had been hanging out until the shell on my 2 inch hermit crab started to turn white as well. Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

sounds like bleaching.... What kinda lights ya got?

 

Lights have nothing to do with it what are the Ca and Alk and Magnesium levels ? also with just the rocks if you have a Urchin they will tear the corallin up but the hermit shell makes me think its more of a problem with the water parameters..

 

Well, its a FOWLR tank and I dont have an urchin, I have standard fluorescents, and I dont have coraline on my live rock probably because of the lights. The calcium and magnesium I dont know, and I would have to wait until the weekend to find out because my closest lfs is 40 miles away and I can afford my own test kits right now. My alk is at 4.0. That number has been tested with more than one type of kit. (salifert, instant ocean)

 

I'm a bit confused. If you are getting white patches on your rock and your hermit crab shell is looking bleached, what "color" were these things before you noticed the white spots?

 

Everything was dark brown, you know, the color of live rock before the coralline grows on it.

 

Coralline algae will bleach under sub par conditions, however, if it is small white areas within the coralline algae, it could be a growth spurt, so to speak...
The white spots on your live rock could be a death on your live rock like a sponge or other dead organism on or within your rock.

 

In the last few days, I've noticed the same with my live rock. There are large patches of white - almost looks like someone came in with a scrub brush and scrubbed off the brown algae. However, I did notice a few little buds of red (coralline?) algae. Calcium levels are at 440; pH is low, however - 7.8. Don't know about the magnesium - don't have a test for that one.

Tank is a 29g Nano. Lights: 2 - FSL 8000K 36w & 2 - AquaLux 36w Blue. I leave the lights on about 9 hours a day.

I've been performing weekly water changes and last night I changed the activated carbon and rinsed the filter sponge.

Any ideas? Suggestions?

 

My spots went away but I still dont know what caused it.

 

think coral reefer was on the money