Brown acros too much light or not enough

[Alex T.]

From what I've experienced, brown corals affect my purple sps first. I introduced a purple nana back in September that was full on purple with green polyps. Over the next few months it browned out. I assumed it was high phosphate so i started upping the gfo. It subsequently started to pale so I knew it wasn't phosphate. Then I started feeding more.....a lot more and voila....purple is returning slowly to the nana and another purple acro. I run 400 watt Radiums on Galaxy ballasts so I know that lighting alone wasn't the cause of the browning. Purple SPS IMO like a little dirt in the water. Some of the best SPS colors I've seen are in tanks with single digit nitrate readings. People running ULNS systems seem to dose amino acids to compensate for the same affect. If your tank is too clean and sterile, the colors will have a hard time showing through unless you supplement with some of the ULNS products to keep some nutrients in the water column.

 

[The Alchemist]

hi there.

just thought id throw in my 2 cents for what its worth with my recent experience with bleaching and browning.

firstly while in fiji on one of the smaller islands there coral reef were bleaching and as it turned out this was due to silt coming from down river making the water murky so that light was unable to reach the coral effectively and this lack of light was bleaching the reef. perhaps the zooxanthellae was being expelled under the stress which lead to bleaching which lead to death

on my 4ft ive been running 4x 54w t5s and have had great growth in my sps and other corals and just the other day i was playing around with some metal halides i had lying around and decided to stick em over me tank to see how they looked
i had them running for 2 hours and silly me i didnt put the glass plate diffuser on the halide which i believe filters out the harmful uv spectrum
to my shock the next day my sps had partially turned brown and many other corals had been effected quite dramatically.
basically they got a sunburn much like we do if we spend too much time at the beach ... well an aussie beach.

from this i can assume that too much light seemed to drive out the zooxanthellae turning the coral brown
and too little light as in the fiji reef also leads to bleaching but do not know weather corals browned before bleaching in that case so no real conclusion can be formed due to too many unknown variables like water quality ect.

i also beleive as the tempratures are heating up in the oceans this is also bleaching corals on many reefs globally

the only solid conclusion i seem to be able to come to is that corals under stress for extended periods of time weather too much or too little light or poor water conditions or extreme temperatures will experience both browning and bleaching resulting in death.

personally i think we know too little about these animals to make absolute conclusions

just my thoughts but i could be off and always willing to listen to others experiences.

 

[benchland]

hello, i am having a similar issue and posted a different question.
the corals im having issues with are the purples (garf, plasma, limeade etc).
i have 2 Ai super sols over a 34g sps tank. i have noticed that the sides of the individual coral that arent receiving as much light have brown pigmentation (though i should clarify, the pigmentation on the limeade is a bit different, kind of purple w/green polyps), whereas the areas facing direct light have bleached out. ex. the limeade has some good pigmentation and p/e on the side not facing the lights. in this experience it looks like too much light has been the culprit.

i have since moved all the purples to the bottom.

 

[fishguy597]

Dopecantwin,
Do you have a sump with room to throw some cheato in there with a light. My nitates were up around twenty two months ago and since I have added the cheato it has since droped to ten. my corals were fine except for an aquacultered piece that was green that browned out. now its making a nice comeback . I just think a reading of 25 is pretty high on an sps tank. have you checked po4? Sorry if you mentioned it before. How is your skimmer doing? a lot of skimmate ? How about water changes?
I think its a water quality issue jmo .

 

[MammothReefer]

I don't think it's only one thing that can cause corals to go brown. It can be a combination of things or any individual thing. Water parameters not being where they should be for that specific coral, changes in your system, a lack of stability, to much light, not enough light, bulbs to old, pests, to much food, not enough food, moving things around to much, not enough flow, and so on.. If you want things to colour up you may not need everything to be 100% perfect all the time but at least 8/10 need to be on point at any given time.

 

[Nicodemus85]

From a real world coral reef point of view, corals turning brown indicates they are changing their photopigments for photoinhibition, that is, shading themselves because of too intense of light. So, it would be hard to argue why less light causes acros in a tank to do this

When purchasing your corals, you generally never know what depth the coral was collected at. Your LFS owner doesn't know this, and even the wholesaler may not know. Yet, it is a very crucial piece of information. Acros turning brown may have nothing to do with your lights but rather the change from living at 5 m deep on a reef to living at 0.1 m deep in your tank. Reef aquariums in general are much too shallow compared to a real reef and as such, corals are receiving wavelengths of light they never see in nature.

My recommendation would be to make sure your pH is at 8.3, your Alk is > 10, and feed your corals plenty of phyto. This will keep 'em happy and eventually they will adjust to your light's intensity and redistribute it's photpigments.


P.S. MammothReefer, is there an LFS in Mammoth or Bishop? How do you make do up there?

 

[Vannpytt]

Nicodemus85,

I've been reading alot on photoinhibition aswell, and the issue with "never too much light" has been proven wrong on many of the papers I've read atleast. I would be interested to know your source for this information so I could read that paper also.

From my experience, the spectrum and intensities, especially when using LEDs can change the appearance of a coral quite dramatically. More white (6500 kelvin) usually dulls the coral and browning them out, while less white and more blue, even different color LEDs, will increase the colors. In daylight, my corals look quite boring, but come rise/fall when there is only blue/colored LEDs on, I get amazing colors (like someone else pointed out).

What I also noticed is that instability in KH is a main source for slow growth and bad colors. The thing that I think is really strange, and have not found much information about, although some small notes is the photoinhibition occuring on the corals just after "saturation" point when the growth turns neon greenish instead of white growth (or whatever color the growth tips/edges would have under "less" T5 or MH light). I see this when there is too much intensity on the blue spectrum LEDs. Somewhere there is a balance, but I've yet to find it.

Then again, I'm quite sure, my problems are from unstable KH swinging from 6 to 10 to 7 again in just a few weeks. I'll report back too see if the corals show the same signs under the different lighting regimes when KH is stable.

To conclude, many many papers show that browning and paling not necessarily are directly a too much too little light scenario. It's far from that easy, atleast when using LEDs. I think the intensities within a narrow spectrum of LEDs (while 6500 kelvin LEDs actually are full spectrum) is far higher than that of a MH or a T5 setup. Also, running Cool White LEDs at 700 mA 100% and 1.2 A 100% is a totaly different spectrum and light all together.

Would really like a good and deep post from Sanjay or someone in his field on LEDs, spectrum, intensities and PAR.

 

[MarcWeaver]

From what I've experienced, brown corals affect my purple sps first. I introduced a purple nana back in September that was full on purple with green polyps. Over the next few months it browned out. I assumed it was high phosphate so i started upping the gfo. It subsequently started to pale so I knew it wasn't phosphate. Then I started feeding more.....a lot more and voila....purple is returning slowly to the nana and another purple acro. I run 400 watt Radiums on Galaxy ballasts so I know that lighting alone wasn't the cause of the browning. Purple SPS IMO like a little dirt in the water. Some of the best SPS colors I've seen are in tanks with single digit nitrate readings. People running ULNS systems seem to dose amino acids to compensate for the same affect. If your tank is too clean and sterile, the colors will have a hard time showing through unless you supplement with some of the ULNS products to keep some nutrients in the water column.

I had the EXACT same experience you did. I strived for ultra-low phosphates and nitrates, but it was killing my acros and making them look like crap. Success came when I let my nitrates rise to 2 or 3 and phosphates to .01-.04. I had my nitrates at 0-0.25 and phosphates were 0 on my hanna checker. I used amino acids which helped, but at a super-high dosage. It was not good!! I also run 400W radiums.

 

[Reef Bass]

My experience - too much light bleaches corals, too little can cause browning. Too little light is not all that can cause browning however. Stress and instability or unsuitability of water parameters, including elevated nitrates, can also contribute to brown.

 

[REEF SMAC]

From a real world coral reef point of view, corals turning brown indicates they are changing their photopigments for photoinhibition, that is, shading themselves because of too intense of light. So, it would be hard to argue why less light causes acros in a tank to do this

Not sure were real world is, but in my little world I can't say that I've ever experienced a coral turning brown from too much light. I've had my share that went bleach white from too much light. They never took the time to turn brown first they just go straight to white.

Nicodemus85,
I've been reading alot on photoinhibition aswell, and the issue with "never too much light" has been proven wrong on many of the papers I've read atleast. I would be interested to know your source for this information so I could read that paper also.

I would like to see the some of these photoinhibition is turning corals brown articles as well. Can someone post a link to one of these "my tank is so overlit its brown" articles.

Even this whole photoinhibition hype seems a little overated to me. Even if your corals have reached this magical "saturation point" of light for the day, they can still handle quite a bit more without being harmed can't they?
IME once they are properly acclimated, SPS can handle a ton of light.

Nicodemus85,
From my experience, the spectrum and intensities, especially when using LEDs can change the appearance of a coral quite dramatically. More white (6500 kelvin) usually dulls the coral and browning them out, while less white and more blue, even different color LEDs, will increase the colors.

Can't say that I've ever seen SPS browned out from 6,500K bulbs. In fact I've seen plenty of tanks with 6,500K bulbs with great colors. They might grow a slightly different color under different color temps, but IME not much. They just appear a different color under different color lighting.

My experience - too much light bleaches corals, too little can cause browning. Too little light is not all that can cause browning however. Stress and instability or unsuitability of water parameters, including elevated nitrates, can also contribute to brown.

+1

This has been my experience as well.



So let's try it this way.

Here are some shots of my SPS that are all the way to the top of my waterline. When I shut off my main pump, my water level drops and plenty of my SPS (and even a Galaxia, an LPS)are sticking up out of the water. Some of them 2".
These corals are below (4)400w MH and (4)Seashine Plasmas all so close together that the reflectors literally touch each other. My Lumenbright reflectors are 8" above my waterline. I've got 20K Radiums, 12k Reeflux, and 6.5K Plasmas (they might even be 5.5K). Beeming down on these corals 9 hours a day.

If I getting any of this feared "photoinhibition", I honestly can't see it.

I don't see anything turning brown from all this "overlighting" either.
The only thing turning brown are the shaded branches and corals underneath this canopy that aren't getting enough light.

As a matter of fact, the ones at the top, getting all that photoinhibition, seem to grow the fastest everytime IME.

Blue stag, out of the water, 8" under a 400w 12K.

Oregon Tort, out of the water, 8" under a 20K 400w Radium.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Here is an orange digi, out of the water, 8" below a 400w 12K.

Here is a green slimer, one with blue tips, one without, out of the water, 8" below a 400w 12K.

Does the color look like it is suffering?

Here is a Palmers, 9" under a 6.5k plasma, not out of the water but it's close.

Are my lights just not as bright as what all the rest of you are running?

Are you guys with all these photoinhibited, browned out tanks running 1000w lights 4" above the water? Really?

 

[Reef Bass]

Super sweet.

 

[Vannpytt]

Are my lights just not as bright as what all the rest of you are running?

Are you guys with all these photoinhibited, browned out tanks running 1000w lights 4" above the water? Really?

No, we are running at least 2x of that touching the water surface :spin1:

Joking aside, that's one sweet testimony to your cause. Granted there are several more factors, acclimation etc, I can't and won't argue. Your tank is proof enough for me.

 

[Reef Bass]

IME once they are properly acclimated, SPS can handle a ton of light.

I agree. Sunlight is so much brighter than my piddly 400w halides. The key here though is "properly acclimated". I think a lot of people take a coral from a low light environment, expose it too quickly to more light, and when that coral bleaches or dies, they assume that there was too much light on an absolute basis. The coral died from improper acclimation to more light, not because the higher par itself was too great.

Zooxanthellae are generally brown. A coral in an underlight environment wants to promote as much energy production as possible from its symbiotic pal. More zooxanthallae = more brown.

Conversely, when a coral expels zooxanthellae or zooxanthellae break down, brown goes away and the coral appears bleached. This also explains why bleached corals often have to brown up first before returning to their fully colored condition. The population of zooxanthellae needs to be reestablished before the coral can kick into high gear being energized by the photosynthate from the zooxanthellae.

 

[Bugger]

I just bought a large piece of arco from a run down lfs anyways put inin the tank and two days later it browned out.
All my other corals seem ok so its not my tank but I know they use bad quality water for there system and I just think browing out has to do with bad water quality and stress or shock due to change in tempp pparmeters light etc. I think it has to do with many things

 

[BrentH]

Nice thread I know it's old but having some of the same issues with the lighting and browning .....I have a 400 watt radium and some of my acros browned I thought from light but prob combo of diff things

 

[joe22883]

In general I agree that browning is usually caused by dirty water or low light ie stress and also agree that after acclimating most sps can handle very high light. But for color... I have had the odd ball. It was a super thick A. Humilis? that stayed brown for atleast a year til moved down. It was acclimated before put up top, was happy and growing but wouldn't color up. Put lower it colored up right away. Growth might have slowed down being under less light fwiw. Purple acro btw. Flow was good and about the same in both spots. Had me stumped. Maybe it was meant to be brown when happy lol. I was overdriving reeflux 12k's on 430w hps ballasts. Perfect spectrum IMO.

 

[biggles]

My experience - too much light bleaches corals, too little can cause browning. Too little light is not all that can cause browning however. Stress and instability or unsuitability of water parameters, including elevated nitrates, can also contribute to brown.

I have always experienced the same. Place a coral in too much light and it pales, too little and it darkens. I always understood the process was the coral decreasing the concentration of light absorbing zooxanthellae in order to lessen the absorption of the light it was being subjected to. Lower it to an area that is not supplying the current zooxanthellae levels with enough light and it will increase the concentration of zooxanthellae in order to absorb more of the lower light to meet it's needs thus darkening. Dirty water even with high light levels also seems to cause a similar reaction but a combination of both too little light and dirty water seems to speed up the 'browning' more than a single parameter out of whack.

 

[epicurus84]

My xp about acro's.

Changing to new water parameters can brown acro's. Many acro's will color brown a bit just after placing it.

Too much light usually caused bleaching. Ive had it under each LED system when placing acro's too high to fast (even under 1 Watt LED's).

Also lack of growth can sometimes be a problem since some will show only collor on the growth tips.

In this case i would not worry yet on the photo the corals look quite well.

Also the type of lighting might show some other colloring as you'd like. Blue lights show better colors then white lights. The coral mostly is the same just what you see is different.

 

[gdemos]

thought i might revive this thread since some time has passed, and open it up as certain approaches have matured LEDs, Zeo, BioPellets, ULNS, aminos and other SPS feedings, DSB vs. syphoned SB, etc.

convention being brown is better than bleach. pale is not great but not dead, it can be corrected too. and that color depends on the balance of nutrient import/export, paramater stability, and proper light. i've come across more guys that have outstanding colors that state they 'run their tanks dirtier than most'. by dirty we're likely talking slightly higher NO3 (2-10ppm) and a touch of PO4 may be tolerated; all which translate to feeding (fish poop) or other nutrient-in.

i've been growing frags in a frag tank for 14 months and have gone through low salinity, too much light, pH/Alk swings, whiteouts from 2 part and kalk, you name it i've had errors. now that i've got parameters in check and plenty of errors under my belt, im hoping colors turn from green/brown/to perfect just by keeping things stable and slowly adding light intensity.


seems that whether you run dirty, clean, LED, t5, MH, biopellet, fuge, or higher NO3, 8dKH or 11-12dKH, the cure to color seems to be patience and consistency/stability. if there were one and only one way to obtain SPS success everyone would do it.

right?