Purple Idaho Grape Question

[cybball]

I have a Purple Monti (Idaho Grape) that is roughly 2 inches wide and 1 inch deep. I picked it up a couple months ago as a frag. It's put on a small amount of growth, but my question is about the color.
The monti I have is tan. It was tan when I got it and tan now. I just put in new 250w 20K XM halides 1 week ago. Before that, I was running used bulbs that could have been pretty old. Will this thing color up? MY CA is 380 and my Alk is 3.0 meq/L.

Any clues?
Thanks,
Cy

[RRaider]

Do you have other sps? How are their colors? The short answer is that if conditions are good (especially very low phosphates) and stable it should color up.

[cubman20]

105506


mine was tan to it took 3 months to get purple. I run 20k 250s

[gar732]

Mine was more brown when I got it about a month ago but it deffinetly purple now. I've got it under T5s. Its not nice as cubman's but it getting there.

[dudley moray]

mines still brown/ tan but it is showing a tiny bit of green tint of all things still waiting for purple it has added about an inch of growth all around in about 3 months now and it is about 6-7 wide but with all things patience is the key

[Gary Majchrzak]

'Idaho grape' isn't particularly demanding. Keep PO4 low and it will purple up under almost any intense lighting.

[Stanley-Reefer]

I got a frag from a local reefer about a month and a half ago. It was brown but has now turned a deep lavender and is growing about 1/16" towards the rock it's puttied on per day.

[SDguy]

It needs low nutrient water and high light to be purple. Frankly, I'm not a fan, since in my tank that would be very expensive realestate up top ;)

Oh, and it's terribly invansive for an SPS. I had to repeatedly kalk it to finally be rid of it in my tank.

[toothman]

Haveing one for 2 yrs, my advice is put it as high in the tank as possible it really likes bright light. It is a weed and will creep and crawl on anything, even a quicker grower than orange monti, be careful with it.

[dmorel]

Agreed on how absurdly fast this thing grows. I just had to remove two pieces from my tank, both larger than your average dinner plate. It's the brown star polyps of the stony corals...

As to color, I've only seen it brown out when I pulled it and put in my sump :) It's been purple under pretty much any light I throw at it.

[Gary Majchrzak]

I have to agree this coral can become a major PITA. Too bad.

In retrospect I wish I'd kept it very low in my aquarium.

[redfishsc]

+1 on the growth, although in my system I'm very partial to it. I don't have an ORA/Tyree budget to fill my tank, lol, so I get what I can afford.


Note that I haven't personally seen any Idaho Grape that looked crazy purple. It's always a light purple with, sometimes, a tan hue. Depends a lot on how blue the lighting is. Mine looks nice under my lights (250DE Phoenix plus 8 Cree XRE royal blue's for actinics), about the color of this little fella---> :sad1:


Under lower K lighting, or in higher phosphate situations, it definitely looks kinda brown/ugly.

[cybball]

All the other SPS (green slimer, orange digi, red cap, ect. all have really good color. This thing is just tan. Sounds like patience is the key. Yes, it is low in the tank, so it won't shade everything under it some day. :)

[Stanley-Reefer]

Mine is a tyree....let it get a little more size on it....IT'S DEEP LAVENDER:fun2:


It's at the bottom to bridge two pieces of rock.