Better coral coloration?

[Julian.Rad17]

I have a green Pocillopora, green birdsnest and a blue/purple Acro that I've had for about two months and their color has been pretty bland. The Acro is a very ligh purple it almost looks almost grey, and my other two just look brown with hardly any noticeable green. They also have not grown at all which is understandable but is there any way to increase their color or is waiting for them to starting growing/adapt to my tank the best thing right now? Also, I have a red monti cap which is very colorful and is a pinkish orange sort of color and it is growing very fast. All of my SPS are in the top half of my tank. I have the AI Prime LED.

Nitrate-0-5
Phosphate-0.08

 

[NaturalReef]

I had the primes and they had no problem coloring up Sps.

Some thoughts,

1.) what are you running the lights at percentage and kelvin wise? 20k seems to color up my sps the fastest.

2.) are you feeding your sps or depending on fish poop? Import and good export?

3.) good flow?


Parameters? Im sure others will chime in...

 

[Julian.Rad17]

White-60%
Blue-80%
Deep blue-70%
Violet-70%
UV-65%
Red-20%
Green-15%
It's looks more like 14k

Reef roids fed every 2 weeks. Sand and rocks blown daily and exported via filter sock cleaning and wc's

Good turbulent, random, flow with a Jebao wavemaker pulsing mode

 

[nmotz]

I have a green Pocillopora, green birdsnest and a blue/purple Acro that I've had for about two months and their color has been pretty bland. The Acro is a very ligh purple it almost looks almost grey, and my other two just look brown with hardly any noticeable green. They also have not grown at all which is understandable but is there any way to increase their color or is waiting for them to starting growing/adapt to my tank the best thing right now? Also, I have a red monti cap which is very colorful and is a pinkish orange sort of color and it is growing very fast. All of my SPS are in the top half of my tank. I have the AI Prime LED.

Nitrate-0-5
Phosphate-0.08

I have two AI Primes over my 40B. How large is your tank? I found that I needed to bring the intensity up slowly over time to start seeing more color. I also saw better coloration under 20K lighting like NaturalReef said.

Some corals respond better than others. In general, plating corals have done better than branching corals under my AI Primes. Part of that is because I had the intensity too low, but some of it is because the coverage of the fixture is hard to get right. I moved the lights up a little higher off the water (about 9") and am slowly ramping them up in intensity. I had them down at like 35% originally. Now they're both at around 70% and I'm taking them all the way up to 100% eventually. I see more and more color as the corals acclimate to the higher light. But you have to do it very slowly or the corals will bleach. I'm convinced that the corals can handle high light like that because I've seen some beautiful tanks that are getting absolutely blasted!

I've also just started a heavier feeding regimen to see if that will make any difference. I'm feeding 1-3 drops of Selcon plus 4 drops of KZ coral vitalizer per day. I have no fish so my theory is that my tank needs heavier feeding whereas most SPS keepers won't notice any difference if they feed because they have fish too. Some of the best in the hobby have me convinced that if you have a good supply of fish poo, you simply don't need to spend money on coral food. But I don't have fish.

If you see brown, it generally means your corals are loaded up on zooxanthellae to conduct more photosynthesis and "produce more food."

 

[nmotz]

White-60%
Blue-80%
Deep blue-70%
Violet-70%
UV-65%
Red-20%
Green-15%
It's looks more like 14k

Reef roids fed every 2 weeks. Sand and rocks blown daily and exported via filter sock cleaning and wc's

Good turbulent, random, flow with a Jebao wavemaker pulsing mode

Yeah, IMO 14K with the AI Primes is pretty blah.

 

[Julian.Rad17]

Ok so the general consensus seems to be that in need to raise my kelvin to a more blue setting as well as my intensities. I have the Red Sea reefer nano 18x18. If there is anything else please let me know. Thanks for the feedback.