Questions about bleaching

[mark_d]

Questions about bleaching
Hey!
Ive been meaning to ask this for a while so here goes.
The store where I buy my corals has everything under pretty high light. I dont know wattage but its all MH and mostly pretty shallow and the lights are pretty close to the surface too.
Most of the corals they have, however, are doing just fine (there are some pieces that havent sold for whatver reason and every time i go they look better).
However, when I put things from their store into mine they bleach.
ATM i dont have many corals, I have a Galaxea, Turbinaria, GSP some shrooms and some rics. Rics and shrooms are just fine, some of the shrooms look more transparent than normal... so maybe they have bleached a bit. My turbinaria was purple, its now pink. Galaxea was green, now pink, and my GSP was BRIGHT GREEN with brown bases and its now white... with some green. its looks ghastly.
WHY!?
Im running 150Watt MH lamp (forget if its 15000K or 10,000K (does it matter?)) thats about maybe 18in from the surface. Lights go on at 9 or 10 or so and i generally turn them off at about 8 or a bit later. After I turn off the MH i leave on a 32watt Actinic PC light just for looks untill maybe 11-12 when i go to bed, i try to shut it off at 10 most of the time (lookin into gettin a timer, havent yet.)
What is my problem? the type of light? the length of time its on? help please? T__T
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[paulcoates]

post your water parameters

 

[mark_d]

ill post em tommorow. out of tests ATM.
... had no idea bleaching could have anything to do with water parameters

 

[ricks280]

it can be all related to ligths, location or placementin your tank, calcium levels, alkalinity , water quality etc.

(rick)

 

[mark_d]

ok this is all i can say now without proper test results.
All my corals are on the sandbed or almost on the sandbed with the exception of the Pagoda cup (turbinaria) which happens to be in the middle.
Also, i think i OD'd calcium a bit cause it was precipitating couple weeks ago like mad. I stopped adding it every few days and instead adding maybe once a week. Today I added some, it mostly dissolved but a little bit precipitated.
Maybe this can help untill i get a better answer.
Also, should say my temps tend to be a bit high between 80 and 85. dunno if this is terribly bad or not.

 

[ricks280]

there is no point adding anything to the tank unless you have the kits ph, alk, calcium, sg etc. to control your water .

 

[aztec reef]

how big is your tank? why are your lights so far away from tank?

 

[viper_930]

It could just be the lights they are using. Most shops use 20,000k halides to bring out the colors more for sales. These bulbs generally have much less PAR than lower kelvin ratings.