Coloring up

[PeeperKeeper]

I have several corals that I don't think are showing their best color. The one that got my attention the most is my Superman Monti whose base is no longer purple at all. It polyps out and has grown, but the color isn't there. After noticing that, I started looking at the birds nest and I think it should have more color as well.

Lighting first. I'm pretty sure I have enough light. I have gradually increased the lighting with LED's. Historically I had two 250 Watt Metal Halides and also 4 four foot T5's. One of the MH's and two of the T5's quit working so I added a 2 foot BML LED over the non-functional MH last January, and the other half of the tank was basically being lit by the 250W MH because the 2 T5's that still work have very old bulbs in them so I don't count their contribution anymore. About 10 days ago, I bought another 2 foot BML LED which I just hung under the MH that works, so while it's blocking some of the MH light, it's adding a lot of its own.

I don't have the stability most of you who do SPS have, but remember that other than this color issue I recently noticed, the tank seems to do pretty well. I actually think it's an example of a low maintenance reef tank with minimal technology to mess with. The only parameters I really watch are temp, DKH and calcium, and I have no reactors or automatic dosers or a skimmer. I just add Reef Builder and calcium. The temp varies from about 77 to 80. Calcium is low right now (about 325 because I wasn't paying attention and let it get low) but I'm working on raising it. I think my last DKH reading was 8.9 but it had been as low as 6.26 in August and as high as 10.8 Sept 12th. I suspect you will tell me that's the main problem. I know some of you worry about a few tenths of change in DKH. I admit I don't know my phosphate level, but it has always been very low when I do check it, which is maybe once or twice a year (this tank has been established for well over 15 years, although I moved it 4 years ago) because I only have 2 fish so I only feed every 2 or 3 days.

So I have two questions:

1.) Other than lighting, what makes a difference in coral color?

2.) How long does it take for it to "color up" once you fix the problem?

When I bought the new LED, I suddenly had a place to move the Superman where it would be much higher in the tank and under the LED/MH instead of just the LED so I moved it hoping that would fix the problem. That was about 10 days ago and I haven't noticed any change. In fact, it almost seems like the BirdsNest which is under the new LED may have faded but I'm not sure of that.

Here's a fairly recent photo showing the Superman before I moved it and some of the BN.

[FarmerTy]

There's lots of variables in your tank right now but probably your new lighting. Sometimes it just takes awhile to adjust to new lighting. My next guess is your phosphate level. I've noticed best coloration when my phosphate was around 0.03-0.05 ppm. Lastly, is probably the changes in alk. Usually a swing of just 0.5 dKh will cause my sps to not be happy.

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[PeeperKeeper]

Thank you JeeperTy. Yeah I'm going to try to keep the alk more stable as well as Ca. Aside from the variation, where do you like to keep it?

I don't have a phosphate tester so when I want to know it I take a sample into the LFS. I'll do that tomorrow hopefully.

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[PeeperKeeper]

Oh and what about question #2? When will I know if I've made a difference?

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[FarmerTy]

I've had some sps color back up in about 2-4 weeks time when they have lost color. I've also had some take 6 months to a year of stability before they showed their true colors. So, it's highly variable but you'll at least see some improvement in about a couple of weeks if everything is right.

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[Sascha D.]

I made the change from T-5 to LED almost a year ago and it took the corals about 2-4 weeks to adjust to the new lighting. I ramped up every week for 4 weeks until Ir eached 75% power on my units. Now I can keep montipora all the way in the sand 36" deep. For that reason I think there may be another factor in the coloration of your superman other than your lights.

[FarmerTy]

I keep my Ca around 425 ppm and my alk around 8.0 dKh.

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[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

It took my corals a whole to adjust to LEDs, but if you keep things stable, they'll eventually color up. Like Ty, I've had corals take half a year to regain color

[PeeperKeeper]

Thanks all. And a big thanks toTimFish who stopped by today and checked my PO4. It was in the range of 0.03-0.045 (Elos).

I got my alk higher than I meant to so now it's at 11dkh and I'm still raising the Ca. It's at 340 mg/l.

I know stability is the name of the game so I'll try to keep a closer eye on them once I get them where I want them. All my corals always seem happy though, as far as polyp extension, growth, etc. even though I've been all over the board on parameters. Now I just want to get the color the best it can be.

[saltynick]

I keep my Ca around 425 ppm and my alk around 8.0 dKh.

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lower lighting levels. Plus,you can always use the zeovit additives its not just hype My sps went nuts and got the best color, even better than buying frags from very reputable businesses.

Worth every cent.

[Timfish]

I'm posting these PAR reading for Dr. Lamanski. The first jpg is from February last year, 2nd is from Wednesday.

[PeeperKeeper]

Thanks so much, Tim. The big difference between Feb and now (and between the right and left side) is that I just hung the LED on the left side, without removing the MH. The LED hangs under the halide on that side so it blocks some of the halide but obviously not all. On the right side the LED was a replacement for a halide that quit working.

So you think I should lower lighting to get better color, saltynick? I just heard about the zeovit stuff when I got some setosa frags the other day. You're the second one to mention it. I'll have to look into it.

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[Neon Reefer]

I made the change from T-5 to LED almost a year ago and it took the corals about 2-4 weeks to adjust to the new lighting. I ramped up every week for 4 weeks until Ir eached 75% power on my units. Now I can keep montipora all the way in the sand 36" deep. For that reason I think there may be another factor in the coloration of your superman other than your lights.

+1 when switching to LED from Fl or MH it took several weeks to go thru a fading and re color up cycle. At one point I could visibly see some of the LPS ejecting zooxanthellae algae so they could take on new zooxanthellae better equipped for the new light spectrum. The color up started at this point. And feeding coral is another key component to getting the best color from your coral, as well as low PO4 and rock solid stability w/ foundation elements.

[PeeperKeeper]

Ok it's been about a month since my last post about this. I've been much better about keeping the DKH between 6.8 and 7.8 and I've got my calcium up around 415. The superman monti is definitely looking better. The purple is really coming out in the base. Also my pink birds nest is now pink for the first time. However, the seriatopora caliendrum has not improved in color and I might even have to say that the pocillopora has gotten less colorful.

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[PeeperKeeper]

My iPad photos don't come out very good in the color, but maybe you can see especially on that lower front part of the Superman that the purple is showing up. The seriatopora caliendrum however, does have the green glow in the tips, but it should have more brown on the base, more like this image I found online.

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[Sascha D.]

I've noticed considerable browning of zoas at elevated phosphates. Pocillopora does like a little bit dirtier water than other SPS, but the losing of the color could be a delayed reaction. I find that it takes more time for some corals to react to changes in water chemistry, while others react immediately.

[Timfish]

Here's an update on PeeperKeeper's system. (I tried to get fancy and include pictures of her birdsnest along with pictures of the same corals in another tank. )

[BBMarlin]

In my experience ALK has a much larger impact on coral color and growth than PO4. For my tank, the sweet spot of ~6.5 dKH yields the best coloration and growth. 0 - .02 PPM is where I keep my PO4, I have not noticed much if any difference on coral coloration within this range but if I run at .02 and higher I do see much more of the green hairy stuff. Running low ALK like this is dangerous and does not give you a lot of wiggle room if you have an issue with your dosers but IME yields the best color.

-brett

[FarmerTy]

In my experience ALK has a much larger impact on coral color and growth than PO4. For my tank, the sweet spot of ~6.5 dKH yields the best coloration and growth. 0 - .02 is where I keep my PO4, I have not noticed much if any difference on coral coloration within this range but if I run at .02 and higher I do see much more of the green hairy stuff. Running low ALK like this is dangerous and does not give you a lot of wiggle room if you have an issue with your dosers but IME yields the best color.

-brett

Pictures or it didn't happen Brett! [emoji6]

I'm kidding but I am curious of your observations. What corals have you noticed this most in?

Do you have any pictures of your system with the higher alk versus the lower alk? It'll be neat to see the visual difference.

[BBMarlin]

Wish I took more before and after photos! Problem is I never know when to take that before photo..ha! I typically gauge my coloration at home based on SPS, I've got a large colony of tri-color valida that I monitor very closely and can tell the slightest change in. In addition to that rasperry limeade that is very sensitive to ALK and will become rather dull at 8dKH+ along with the valida.

I believe that low Alk systems are par for the course with the zeovit method. One could argue that some of these tank have the most colorful sticks attainable in a reef system. I believe the nutrient poor/low Alk environment contributes to this.

-brett

[FarmerTy]

Is there any other way to gauge coloration other than sps? The zoa addicts are about to jump all over me! [emoji12]

So here's my thoughts. I've never seen a nicely colored SPS tank with higher phosphates. I'm talking mostly acros and not so much birdsnests or digitatas. They tend to look good in some tanks irregardless of nutrient levels. Hence why most use them as a tester SPS coral to see if you can keep them. I've seen my fair share of tanks too... though I in no way can encompass the shared community experiences of viewing other tanks.

However, I've seen plenty of great looking SPS tanks at lower or higher alkalinity levels. To me, that removes the criteria that a greatly colored SPS tank is dependent on lower alk levels. Actually, the guy I learned the most from about SPS husbandry kept his alk at 11 dKh. His colors were amazing! Most though, keep their tanks around 8.5 dKh or lower because they are already running some type of carbon dosing and the general consensus is to keep your alk levels low while carbon dosing. So, there may be a correlation with lower alk levels with better colors in the general population but part of that may just be the coincidence that most of those lower alk tanks are also running some type of carbon dosing to control nutrient levels; therefore, better coloration associated with those tanks (zeo included).

I was hoping to see some evidence you've might have gathered to lend to the theory of lower alk levels correlating to better colors in SPS. I'm not suggesting you do this but it would be interesting to have you raise your alk to a higher level and leave it there for some time. I'm curious to see if your raspberry limeade, which tends to darken with higher alk, will eventually color back up if given time to acclimate to the higher alk levels. That perhaps maybe, it darkening is just a response to a negative stimulus, such as the change in alk levels, and then it will color back up nicely again after stability has been reached.

If you have any other observations regarding your coloration with your corals, I'd love to hear them. I find the topic fascinating and like to acquire as much information about it as I can!

[Timfish]

Wish I took more before and after photos! Problem is I never know when to take that before photo..ha! . . .

Careful what you wish for, I got over a 100 gigabits of photos and still have this problem!

[Timfish]

Over the years I've been very surprised to see stoney corals apparently happy with alkalinity levels as low as 4 dKH and as high as 15 dKH. This observations about alkalinity affecting coral coloration is intriguing (I have not noticed this myself) but all the the research I've read so far is the amount of fluorescing and chromo proteins a coral produces is a function of the number of it's symbiotic dinoflagellates and the intensity and to a lesser extant the spectrum of the light the coral receives. The amount of nitrogen (ammonium, nitrites or nitrates) and phosphates available to the coral polyp is relevant to the extent it influences the number of symbionts the coral has.

[victoly]

Wish I took more before and after photos! Problem is I never know when to take that before photo..ha! . . .

Careful what you wish for, I got over a 100 gigabits of photos and still have this problem!

pshhhhh only 12 gigabytes?!

[PeeperKeeper]

In my experience ALK has a much larger impact on coral color and growth than PO4. For my tank, the sweet spot of ~6.5 dKH yields the best coloration and growth. 0 - .02 PPM is where I keep my PO4, I have not noticed much if any difference on coral coloration within this range but if I run at .02 and higher I do see much more of the green hairy stuff. Running low ALK like this is dangerous and does not give you a lot of wiggle room if you have an issue with your dosers but IME yields the best color.

-brett

Yeah ummmm my "doser" is me when I remember to add calcium or Reef Builder. I've been getting better lately at keeping alk between 6.0 and about 7.75 most of the time. You guys have SPOILED your corals, keeping your parameters so stable all the time! Mine have to be tough and put up with my inconsistencies.

Joking aside, when Timfish and I were talking, we wondered if my phosphates were possibly too low. I only have 2 fish so they were only getting fed 1 cube every other day or less so not really much source of phosphates. To test the theory, I bought some "Coral Smoothie" at RCA and started spot feeding the corals on the days we weren't feeding the fish. Within 2 weeks, the bird of paradise (if that's what it is) picked up a lot of color (sorry I don't have a photo, but I think Tim took some? ...so maybe it happened?) and my frogspawn started expanding much better. I can't say for sure if the pink BN, pocillopora and other corals are improving, but I'm very pleased with the improvement I've seen so far.

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