color changes

[dzones]

Not long ago I had an odd incident in my aquarium and lost a few sps overnight. I am still uncertain what caused this to happen but I do have a few ideas of what may have been the culprit.
All of my zoas are thriving but it is what happened to one of my montiporas that got my attention.
I purchased it last year as a 1" frag, 1" green capricornis. Well.. after this incident it has completely turned blue. darker than plae blue but definitely blue. its polyps still come out and it seems to be ok. My other red cap is doing well also but no color change.

any thoughts what could of done that kind of color change?

At the time of this event nothing had changed in my tank for sometime but since it started I have changed to a new light setup with stronger halides and t5's.

 

[joeycadre]

i thought i bought a pink cap a couple of months ago, but now it's growing orange.....


just weird coral crap i guess. i give up on trying to figure it out.

 

[dzones]

Well I bought this particular cap about a 8 months ago as a 1" frag and it grew to about 5-6" as the same green color. then this blue color happened in just a couple days. I will see if i can get soem before and after pics when my tank lights up again

 

[ducklabdad]

First let me check this with the following disclaimer:
"I am only giving this response from some of the reading that I have done on this and no way claim to "Know" that what I am talking about"!!! It is my personal opinion that way to many people (in life in general but very much so on some Reef Central forums) express things as facts when they are doing nothing more than making a guess, some less than educated."

Now that I have that out of the way, one thing in particular that is "theorized" that occurs where under the same lighting the same corals can show two different colors in a aquarium are from the actual water chemistry within that aquarium.much more than our simple water testing is going to show.

The water chemistry in each reef aquarium will vary greatly depending on the different coral species within that aquarium as well as all the other "things" that we have in our live rock that often comes from "god only knows where." This affects the different types of algae that we have in our tanks as well as the differnt zooxanthellae that are taken in and absorbed by the different corals, which in turn affects the photosynthesis and UV absorption of that specific speciman. Several different books and personal observation in this case show where when a coral enters a "different system" or that changes in the environment take place it may cause the coral to "expel" there zooxanthellae and then "bleach out" and then they will slowly take in new zooxanthellae (we hope) which when complete will give the coral a totally different color.

There are so many different things that affect the color of different corals, I think we know very little on this and it is fascinating, and I think we will see much more research on this in the years to come "due to reef aquariums and the intrest in this hobby"

I will try and locate a couple of the articles I have read recently on this and "reference them" .

 

[MrRyanT]

things that make you go hmmmmmmmmm.......

 

[MrRyanT]

ok, sorry, just had to say that. On a more serious note, I think my best guess would be color spectrum. Bulbs change spectrum over time. I know you said you changed bulbs after the incident and the coral remained blue, but that's still my guess and I'm sticking with it. Also, did the coral change colors over that same night you lost the other sps, or was it sometime later?

 

[ducklabdad]

Check the first two volumes of "The Reef Aquarium " by Delbeck and Sprung, and look in the back under "Bleaching" and there are several different sections that discuss the different theories on this and color.

There was also and article in Coral Magazine (Has Gobies on the Front) Vol. 4 # 6 Dec/Jan on Alagae page 14 has a section discussing this as well.

there are also discussions on this as to how the symbiotic algae are affected by "Temperature" and how that can affect color as well.

Who said this was simply stick the stuff in your tank and forget about it!!

 

[dzones]

thanks for the info so far guys. I will check those articles Ducklabdad.

MrRyanT - all of this happened around the same time and the cap took about 2 weeks from green to blue.

 

[Reefdiver77]

Dave, you apparently have on of the rare chameleon corals. You should make lots of $$$ fragging it!!

 

[dzones]

wouldn't that be nice. I think i bought this green cap frag from you Vicki at the nashville swap.

 

[spshead03]

I have seen this piece and Im here to tell you that the cap is really blue not slightly blue I mean really blue. I have never seen a blue monti cap. The trachaphyllia that he has is totally white but still fully extends its flesh is white to, its crazy.

 

[scarson61]

I do believe even after corals bleech they are still alive, they just have to be fed (a lot) and given time if they don't starve will come back. I did have a weird color change one time on a rose milli that went from pink one day then all of the sudden it was a beautiful deep blue all over (even with polyps extended) sadly the coral slowly died. My friend Gary had a monti cap that bleeched out and I declared it dead, but over time it regained its color and made a full comeback. So corals do have some amazing comeback powers.