Color on Finger Leather Coral

[Mare100]

Hi!

I posted this on the "Soft Coral Keeping" thread, but since I'm fairly new to the hobby...I thought I'd try it here too. Hope that's okay.

We have two leather corals in our tank that are placed about 2 inches from each other. One is a bright yellow Fiji Leather coral...and the other is a light purplish/tan finger leather coral. Both are doing great. Within the past 2 days however, I noticed that the "fingers" on the side of the finger leather coral that is closest to the Fiji Yellow have a definite, almost fluorescent yellow tint on them. At first, I thought it was some sort of algae and tried to blow it off with the bulb syringe, but it is almost like the actual coral itself is discolored.

Is there a possibility that something from the Fiji yellow is rubbing off on the finger leather?

Also...the finger leather is up toward the top of the tank. Is there any chance that the lighting could cause this?

We have 2 sets of lights up there......no metal halides. They are:

65 watt dual daylight
65 watt dual actinic

96 watt dual daylight
96 watt dual actinic

There is a total of 322 watts of lights up there in a 120 gal. tank.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

M

[bertoni]

You might be seeing some chemical warfare or possibly some effects of a coral that's been dyed. Hard to say. I'd move them a bit further apart.

[Mare100]

OK....that I can do. Will have to move the Fiji though. We "puttied" the leather to a big piece of LR because the poor guy kept getting his rock knocked off by the crabs/snails.

M

[Mare100]

OK....that I can do. Will have to move the Fiji though. We "puttied" the leather to a big piece of LR because the poor guy kept getting his rock knocked off by the crabs/snails.

They "dye" corals? Jeez....I never knew that!

M