Acan with boring color

[minus9]

I feed mysis and Larry's reef frenzy, but mostly Larry's.

 

[UKMarineGuy]

Too much light, too high up... Lower them down and target your lighting to 400-420nm. Im currently training mine to the lower end and getting some brilliant results. For the best colours always target lower end

Cheers,

 

[organism]

I currently don't have any gel filters to show the true colors of my corals without the over saturation of blue that you get with coral pictures. I also would like to get the photos shot in RAW format so there's no discrepancies about photo manipulation. I know, excuses.

When you get them feel free to post them up, you can pm me the RAW format if you don't have much practice working with them. No one's antagonizing you, you posted up that Kessils are great while at the same time making other threads that you want to replace your Kessils because they're not good lights. Forums are for sharing good info, so knowingly promoting subpar gear helps no one, and neither does getting upset after painting yourself into a corner.

Ok, right now I have dialed my intensity down to like 20%, and color is 30. Is this the right way to go, lower intensity and colors? And is there something I can look for, to see if the corals is getting to low light?

You don't want your intensity low, you want your spectrum low. What you're looking for is bright blue light with minimal to no white, low intensity is still a brown coral.

So I will keep my low intensity light for now, and see how it's going.
And then start feeding more regularly - do you guys have anything you can recommend for feeding corals?

imo feeding corals is something better left for when you have more hobby experience. Photosynthetic corals like acans (or anything that isn't a sun polyp) don't need feeding. They can eat but they don't need to eat, and confusing the two has ruined many tanks. The thing is extra food leads to excess nutrients which can grow tons and tons of algae, brown out your corals and even stop them from growing altogether. Plus your rocks can absorb some of the extra nutrients and you could be fighting algae for a long time. Basically food or lack thereof is not the issue, I have crazy nice Acans that haven't been fed in 4+ years

 

[timger]

When you get them feel free to post them up, you can pm me the RAW format if you don't have much practice working with them. No one's antagonizing you, you posted up that Kessils are great while at the same time making other threads that you want to replace your Kessils because they're not good lights. Forums are for sharing good info, so knowingly promoting subpar gear helps no one, and neither does getting upset after painting yourself into a corner.



You don't want your intensity low, you want your spectrum low. What you're looking for is bright blue light with minimal to no white, low intensity is still a brown coral.



imo feeding corals is something better left for when you have more hobby experience. Photosynthetic corals like acans (or anything that isn't a sun polyp) don't need feeding. They can eat but they don't need to eat, and confusing the two has ruined many tanks. The thing is extra food leads to excess nutrients which can grow tons and tons of algae, brown out your corals and even stop them from growing altogether. Plus your rocks can absorb some of the extra nutrients and you could be fighting algae for a long time. Basically food or lack thereof is not the issue, I have crazy nice Acans that haven't been fed in 4+ years

Ok, so if I'm understand what you're saying correct, I don't need low intensity, but low spectrum.
That means, on my Kessils, dial it down, to show blue only, the deep, blue they can make?
Intensity doesn't have to be low? Right now, I have it dialed down to almost the lowest setting.

I have just measured my nitrate, it is 10 now, but is on it's way down.
I have feed the corals and fish frozen mysis 2 times now. Spot feed the corals with it, and the left overs to the fish. Other then that, Red Sea Energy A&B a couple of times. I think my corals respond great to this, but if you say I should watch out, maybe I should stop that?
I have never had any algae of any kind. In the start I had good growth on all corals, but it's like that stopped, and none of them growed in a while now.

I have taken a new picture today, of the green and purple Acan in the first post.



It's still not showing any real color - what would you advice me to do from now on?
I have just turned the knob more towards the blue side.
The intensity is still almost the lowest possible with Kessils. Should I ramp this up slowly? Or what to do? THANK YOU :rollface:

 

[Reef Frog]

I'm often surprised at how little light acan lords need to look their best, and I find it's easy to over expose them with my 6x ATI bulbs (3 blues, 1 actinic & 2 coral plus which use plenty of blue phosphors).

My excellent LFS is an LPS specialist & maintains great looking acans for long periods of time with Kessils & G3 Radions which are mounted very high (3' or more) and spaced far apart (6' or more) in your standard frag tubs. Most of us would probably consider this light to be much too little intensity for a home display tank but it works for them. Maybe this relocated their natural environment more precisely than most home set ups?

I've placed mine at the bottom of the tank in indirect light, and have baffled the intensity of the lights with shade screen in that section. I've also moved to "bluer" light tubes in the royal blue & actinic spectrum. Results are good with coloration & polyp extension. Other corals like candy canes and some favias like Christmas Tree also look their best in this environment for me. This is in near zero NO3 water, 79-81F, low phosphates running high capacity GFO.

Interesting thought regarding <26C water being ideal for specimins harvested in the southern GBR...never heard that before. Any one out there know more about the specifics of their natural habitat(s)?

 

[organism]

I have just measured my nitrate, it is 10 now, but is on it's way down.
I have feed the corals and fish frozen mysis 2 times now. Spot feed the corals with it, and the left overs to the fish. Other then that, Red Sea Energy A&B a couple of times. I think my corals respond great to this, but if you say I should watch out, maybe I should stop that?

With nitrates at 10 I'd stop feeding everything but fish until they drop. In all honesty if they got as high as 10 you should stop feeding anything that's not fish for a very long time because you've been overfeeding and it's a good habit to break early. Red Sea Energy is for tanks with nitrates and phosphates near 0, won't help your tank without those levels it'll just brown stuff out.

I have just turned the knob more towards the blue side.
The intensity is still almost the lowest possible with Kessils. Should I ramp this up slowly? Or what to do? THANK YOU :rollface:

blue = 100% intensity, white = 0-10% intensity. Now.

 

[Reeferz412]

I got two ATI Coral+ and 4 ATI Blue. My acans are at lvl with my sps and they have great coloration. I feed them every other day.

 

[that Fish Guy]

Agreed, the more blue light you can hit acans with the better the colors, and the more white light the greyer/browner the colors. I have yet to see a tank using only Kessils with really bright colors though, not a fan of those.

These Acans are in a Tank Using ONLY Kessils.

P.S. The Pics are Bad these Acans Look Much Better in Person.

 

[Scorpius]

Kessil will grow darn near anything given proper acclimation, yet some montipora elude me yet.

 

[CrayolaViolence]

I read somewhere, when corals are rapidly growing they will lose color and go brownish, slower growth gives you better color. Not sure where I read that, an article somewhere. But didn't know if anyone had mentioned that yet or not.