Corals losing color but growing?
 

This seems to be the case for most of the corals I get.

I got a really dark purple hammer coral that had 2 heads. It is not light purple with 4.

Got a dark purple torch that had 1 head, it not had 4 but much lighter.

I had Starburst polyps that had green tips on the end. Now the tips arent green but it has spread all over my rock.

Various birdsnest seem to lighten up in color but seem to be growing. One seems almost bleached for the most part but seems to be growing.

Many caps have changed colors but grown rapidly, dark orange to like orange, darkblue to a purple/light blue, brown to an almost light tan color.

Open brain, acans, war coral, same thing.

I have a 125g tank with sump and refuge.

Parameters are all normal and maintain alk/calc with an ATO kalk. I run GFO/Carbon, I run an ATI 6 bulb system with 4 ati blue plus, 1 6500k, and 1 purple plus. I'm out of ideas. I've tried feeding often to barely at all, I've tried to adjust the lighting cycle....

Any suggestions on what I could try?


Examples: (These pics are probably 3 months old btw)
The bleached part of this coral actually began growing polyps on it but it began to lose color.
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4527/pic1qtm.jpg

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5220/pic2rj.jpg

These pics are about a month in the tank or so. Currently these caps are even bigger and have began spread all over the rock.
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/7776/543zo.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/5306/873l.jpg
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4329/544d.jpg
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/4961/883m.jpg

They don't look bad to me, but lightening up of colors all over the tank probably isn't good. How long do you have your lights on for?

how old is your tank?
If a tank is not in balance ie. , nutrients, calcium, alkalinity, etc. then you will have problems.You have not given enough info to give a good solution to your problem.
ETA: saying your parameters are "normal" doesn't help or add much to helping you determine your problem.

I have the same thing and started a thread. Here is the link. Maybe this will help. Some of my pieces are showing more color now.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2064637

Magnesium & Potasssium Iodide help with coloration as well as a higher K spectrum, 6,500-10,000 k is the accepted growth spectrum, 14,000-20,000k is the color spectrum. I am not familiar with your lighting set up, but I would venture to give my opinion that it might be a contributor to your dilemma.

Normal:

0 amm
0 trite
0 trate
8.5kh
440 calc
1350 mg

You know, normal.

TY to the link for your thread, seems like almost the exact same thing I'm going through. I have a Garf bonsai that was real deep magenta color, it's now a light purple but seems to be healthy for the most part. Did you ever manage to figure out what your problem was?


The lighting time varies. The dust/dawn lights usually stay on for 2 hrs before and after the daylight lights kick on. I've messed with the daylight one a bit. I think right now its on for 6ish hours.

I just recently started feed coral frenzy about 3-4 weeks ago 2x a week and feeding my fish once a day instead of every other day. Hasn't seemed to help.


I remember reading that 10K+ was for color, but would the corals really fade out this much? ATI Blue+ and Purple+ are pretty standard. I dont recall reading anything bad about them colors wise. I just replaced my bulbs about 2 months ago.

Your bulb combo doesn't look bad at all, if it were me I'd swap the 6500k for an ATI aquablue 14k ish but it's more of a preference thing. About how long have you had your tank? You may want to try amino acids, I prefer zeovit's AAHC and they work great, especially on SPS.

Sorry for off topic question, but organism, what is that coral in your avatar. It is spectacular!

Happens to me with my frogspawn and the problem was lights... As soon I put an stronger light everything start having it's color back...

You said your daylight bulb was 6,500k , not 10,000k & purple is not a part of the color spectrum, it's blue. I know people claim to have a perfectly awesome reef tank with FLO lights, but that has not been my experience for 16-17 years. My set up is a 90g Reef with 2 Aqualine Bushke 10,000k MH bulbs & 2 96 watt Super Actinic VHO's. I have good coloration & good growth. This has been my experience, there is more than 1 right way & more than 1 wrong way to approach this hobby.

My corals are still light colored, but they are getting color back now, especially the Tricolor. My red Monti cap had faded as well from maroon to light pink, but it's now a deep pink. I think part of my issues have been tank acclimation--different tank parameters so the corals changed colors due to it. I spoke with an online vendor who sponsors another forum and he told me they use MH for growth, and then move their pieces to another tank with T5's for color. Go figure.

I do have a 6500K! I was just commenting on the 10,000K. Looking back, I probably would have went with MH. With MH you never really need to worry about corals not getting enough light. I was really worried about the heat because our AC wasn't very good at the time. We got Central Air this year so thats nice.

Tank was setup last Nov, and stock was put in it in Feb. Had the tank setup and ready to go minus the lights! Took a little longer to save up the money then initially planned! I think my next Bulb combo might be 4 ATI Blue+ the Purple+ and a 14K.

I was running GFO and Carbon 24/7. I shut those off and I'm going to see if there is an improvement.

+1 That sounds good, Good luck, I hope your corals color back up for you.

Thanks, I love mushrooms and think they're an underrated coral. The full pic's even nicer :D

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y70...rcolonynew.jpg

Nah, t5's definitely outperform halides. True you might (or might not) technically can have higher par with a halide but it's not uniform, the area staight under the halide is brighter than the edges, which are about 50% darker than they'd be under t5's. As far as the bulb combo that's the exact one I used and a lot of retailers use, whenever you switch over you'll wish you'd done so sooner :)

Were you running a lot of gfo and carbon? That could definitely lighten up colors, might be the issue.

"Nah, t5's definitely outperform halides"


Maybe for keeping mushrooms. If you want to compare the higher end LED fixtures with Metal Halides, maybe I'll listen, T-5's are the perfect actinic supplement but do not outperform Halides.

ok, let me rephrase it for the armchair expert who just reminded me why I'd stopped posting in this section.

Even in a 1500 gallon SPS farm system t5's more than dramatically outperform halides to the point of it almost being funny, maybe along the lines of 3:1, and that's not even considering energy savings which would be around or more than 2:1. It's why nearly every wholesaler and retailer in socal uses t5's and has let their halides go by the wayside, and I don't know a single moderate sized coral farm that bothers with halides anymore.

Maybe you know something the rest of us don't though, so if you have any data other than bad advice stemming from what is apparently zero experience with the topic at hand then let's hear them. My suggestion would be to copy and paste your post into the SPS forum so they can get a kick out of it, this is something more people than just me should be facepalming over and setting you straight on.

Forgive me & my 16 years of experience, I failed to notice you were from Southern California, the mecca of all things coral related. I guess SoCal say's it so, it's so. Quite a compelling argument & your "advice" is just an opinion, like mine. BTW facepalm, very, very clever, talk about knowing it all!!!!

Ah meltdowns, how I've missed the "new to the hobby" posters... If you're intent on debating please feel free to copy and paste your post into the SPS section. No one's stopping you from proving everyone wrong with your ample t5 experience, and it's a tragedy that your wealth of knowledge has until now been confined to derailing threads.

So OP, sorry for the derail, but getting back to the main point, were you running a lot of gfo and carbon fairly consistently? I've heard of those having lightening effects, hopefully now that you've taken them offline you'll see some changes. I'd keep an eye on corals browning out and nuisance algae growth though, maybe run less carbon/gfo than before if those start showing up.

Haha I see my thread took a turn for the worst :P

I stopped running the GFO and Carbon and haven't noticed any nuisance algae build up...

Well besides the stuff already there.

It's so weird because my father has a little Red Sea Max with stock lighting (2 10K bulbs and 2 acintics) and I gave him a couple pieces of an SPS that broke off when putting them in my tank. His haven't lost ANY color. Meanwhile mine have dulled quite a bite. I KNOW I have more lighting in my tank then his lol!

Brother you need a little nitrate and pospate, these elements are required for growth. My tank is stable and has been stable ant 10ppm nitrates. If you have fish. And coral you will have nitrate and pospate. You could be feeding at the wrong time of day. Broadcast feed more at night. Your intensity also seems a bit high, make sure you are dosing your ALK at night when it drops to help keep it in check.

It looks like a cat

@Afaylenerich88 Brother you need to watch your post dates.. :p The post you responded too was in 2011 :fun5:
Welcome to the forum though

"many" are much more aware now vs 9+ years ago that nitrates and phosphates are beneficial nutrients and attempting to eliminate them is not the goal.