Found the cause of my bleaching hammer (hopefully)

[ThrillYa]

A branching hammer has recently lost it's color and I've been frantically checking water parameters and everything else I could think of to determine what is going on. Some of the other corals have had limited polyp extension as well.

I swapped out heaters and of course had to adjust their temp settings as well. It seemed that I was having to turn them up too much to hold my desired 79 degree temp. Well, I finally bought a new thermometer (which happened to be the exact same model I already had) which was very revealing.

The old thermometer read 79.5 while the new read 85.5. Ouch!

Mike

 

[Ben1]

I bet if you bought a third it would be different then the other two lol. I had my temp controller on my chiller telling me one thing, a medusa controller anoghter, a fauna marine digital thermometer something else and a hanna pH/Temp probe a different number.

I dont think these things are all so accurate. Hopefully your new one is closer to accurate then the old one. I bought one of those coralife ones at one point to and dropped it in the water, then I bought one of those jbj ones that never worked out of the box.

So maybe you have been overheating your water for awhile, good luck! FWIW I bought a hammer for my sons tank awhile ago and it bleached at one point but came back. It took a long time to regain its color though, but it is healthy again now.

 

[fcmatt]

something to be said for having two sources of temp.
i always did. one for the display and one for the sump.
i used those wireless marine pinpoint sensors. was nice knowing
two sources gave me a more reliable answer to my question of just
what temp is my water at.

 

[SlipperMan]

I had two of those (not Coralife but another brand), one would read in the low 70's, the other the high 70's.

I've found the floating alcohol thermometers to be pretty darn accurate. Mine is about 1F off according to the probe I used in chem lab.

 

[SnowManSnow]

IMO you can't beat an old mercury thermometer

b

 

[ThrillYa]

IMO you can't beat an old mercury thermometer

b

Yep, I've got one of those again now too. It reads about the same as the new digital.