coral color question

sillygoose

sillygoose

New member
Hey everybody.

Besides lighting, is there anything else that affects coral color. Mine won't seem to color up as much as I would like. For instance, my red planet is pink with no green to the base. I have good polyp extension and it is growing well so it is otherwise healthy. I've cut back (again) on my sol super blues. This has been going on for a long time - not something new. Any thoughts?
 
Dumb, It is on another forum. PM me your e-mail and I will send the link. Good article. Has helped me with purples and blues.
 
Silly - maybe feed a little more ? I know my SPS are always hungry. I would also try some Amino Acids (AA) like Aquavito Fuel. Just be careful not to over do it with this as it can add a lot of unwanted algae. I feed my fish a lot and my SPS seem to be doing great but keep in mind I am carbon dosing with vinegar. Also - leds can be tricky too as they seem to blast the coral with a lot of light. Took me some time to adjust my Radion to the right amount of color spectrum and intensity.
 
Also - I agree with Wade. Potassium & Potassium iodine work wonders too again just don't over dose or you may need up with all your corals turning green. These are minor trace elements that if you have a big skimmer will most likely be skimmed out fast after a WC.
 
Wade - According to the Thrive Aquatics Website it's a blend.

"This is a saturated solution of potassium sulfate and potassium chloride. This means you won’t find this blend of potassium any stronger. You may find stronger solutions made with more potassium chloride, but we feel that too much potassium chloride may brown corals. "

Ingredients
"RODI water, potassium sulfate, potassium chloride"
 
Thanks for all the input. I'm gonna get some potassium additive.

Just out of curiosity, I have adjusted my lights down on the whites and have more predominant blue and royal blue. Does anyone have experience doing something like that?
 
Light intensity and water quality, be careful getting into the doctoring mode, one thing can lead to another. If you get water quality and lighting up you should see improvement. If you doctor test for what you can but with water changes of good quality salt you should not need to doctor. Check your Nitrates, that will give you a good indicator of your water quality.
 
I wont get into that as I'm not current on salts, but most should be good if they have good blending equipment (yes some salts are not mixed properly and settle, giving you bad mix if you only use partial portion). Get a mix that is designed for Reef as some are cheaper and great for fish only but lack elements for corals. Lighting spectrum, intensity and age of bulbs/tubes also play a large roll. Also know your coral, is it deep water, mid water or shallow, high flow or low flow and place accordingly. Some corals like pristine water, others sewer water, again know what you have. Mixing some corals can affect them, leathers can inhibit LPS, some give off chems.

But in short, I would do water changes, keeping my nitrates low (barely readable) for most of the nicer stony's, high intensity, good spectrum lighting, paying attention to bulb life
 
huh - I didn't know LPS/leather interaction. My LPS are going gangbusters but my one leather has looked horrible for months. They've been there all together for at least a year but the leather has been weird after being beautiful for months??? Probably something else but interesting.

My nitrates are zero - it's all caught up in hair algae! What a pain that is. I've got LEDs so no old bulbs to worry about. I've had great growth and polyp extension - just pale for quite a while. Even my massive frogspawn is not as green as I would like.

What I'm trying - cut light intensity; dosed with strontium and potassium; more frequent water changes. I'd like to add a phosphate reactor maybe. I'll see if that helps.
 
SPS, sorry, been out of it for awhile, freshwater, lol, but yes, LPS can scare SPS and Leathers with sweepers too. If you have hair algae you need to work on water changes, check for excess detritus in you bed or between rocks
 
If your having hair algae issues you have excess phosphates, work on that along with keeping that Alk as stable as possible while making very slow changes to things. Stability is number one with SPS with alk being most important. If your getting pale colors maybe dial those LEDs back a little but make your changes slowly.
 
MMK1 said:
Are LED's better than fluorescence in helping bring out the color as well?
Click to expand...

I think that's a really hard question to answer and it would depend on who you ask. Honestly I think with quality build fixtures, T5, halide and LED can all work great. I'm pretty happy with my combo t5/LED
 
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