Help!! everything loosing color

Sorry this is going to be long. A week ago something strange started happening to my 180 gallon tank. I noticed that an sps that I have had for 4 months and was doing fine, started to bleach. About 2 days after that, a ora birdsnest that has been in my tank for about 5 months started bleaching but still had polyps. I also noticed that all 6 of my anemones started to loose their color. I did a whole batter of water tests. Oh by the way the fish are all doing fine.
salinity 1.025
nitrate .02 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
calcium 480ppm
alk 8dkh
ph 8.3

current
livestock
2 clowns
2 coral beauty
1 wrasse
1 niger trigger
1 mandarine
2 emeralds
lots of snails
lots of hermit crabs
2 shrimp
lawnmower blenny

corals
lots of zoas and palys moved to different tank just in case
not affected by this.
2 ora birdsnest both bleached
1 deep water blue tip stag bleached
pink tip hammer lost 2 heads
purple /green tip hammer fine its still in the 180
purple tip frogspawn lost 2 heads.
green tip frogspawn moved it to different tank.
pink torch coral moved to different tank
red monti slowly loosing color
green fuzzy mushroom almost white
gsp doing fine
mushrooms 4 or 5 different kinds doing fine in the 180
candy cane doing fine
duncan frag doing fine

I moved as much coral as I could to a jbj24 gal that I have
and everything is doing fine it that.

I also did a 40% water change (which by the way has not changed anything with the tank.)
its been 3 days and I still don't see any color coming back in the anemones or the fuzzy mushroom.
 
any help would be greatly appreciated.


Edited by suiso man - September 11 2012 at 4:23pm

Vitamin C was the problem when my stuff started bleaching, I was told by a few people VC would make my corals really happy.... not the case really. My softies loved it, all my sps bleached and died.

This probably has nothing to do with your problems, but I don't think I've heard this mentioned before. Do you have a chiller? I learned something a month or two ago....from my bad decisions! I had a chiller for 2 1/2 years. I must have forgot that the manual said clean every 6 months. When I cleaned that chiller you wouldn't believe the crud that came out of it.

It sucks when stuff like this happens cause the prob could be resolved but you wont see instant results. It takes alot longer for coral and anemones to get their color back than it did to lose it. I once tried to nurse a friends bleached bta back to health and in over a year it was in my tank it never got its color back. If your params are spot on and it happened suddenly my best guess would be temp issue as well or contamination.

Edited by wickedsnowman - September 11 2012 at 8:07pm

Check your magnesium

water is not very warm I keep my temp about 76 degrees.

maybe it is the lights then. Shaun, I don't have a tester for magnesium I don't have that many sps so I haven't worried about it.

Edited by suiso man - September 12 2012 at 8:16am

Could be the light, but I doubt it.  Probably work change a bulb out now and another one is a week or two.   I would stop any dosing.  I think you did the right think by doing a large water change.  I would probably do another on as well.  Once a coral is bleached it will take a little while until you notice the coloration coming back so waiting just a few days does not necessarly tell you if the water change helped or not.