Coral green to yellow

[tjsailosullivan]

Anyone. I have been struggling with maintaining my greens and looking for some thoughts. I have a nice bali slimmer. It's growing great, but I noticed that it went to a lighter shade of florescent yellow. Glows bright yellow under leds and still growing and has great polyp extension. Same goes for a bright neon green monti cap that I recently purchased and is now leaning to greenish yellow color. I do weekly 10% water changes weekly (reef crystals). Reef Parameters (alk, calcium) are all in the standard norm. I even tested potassium and it was in the norm range. Phosphates and nitrates are undetectable. My bulbs are 3-4 months old. par level is around 400-350 at the rocks. I haven't tested Iron yet, but with my water changes and daily feeding of the fish I have a hard time thinking that it's the culprit. I will test Iron once i pick up a iron test.
As a precaution I did raise my lights (250 watt phoenix 14k, reefbrite xho blue leds) up a little higher from the surface thinking that my bulbs might be pushing to much UV and hoping that it might resolve the issue. I guess only time will tell. I raised the lights because i just noticed one of my yellow milliporas was developing a slight pink hugh in the coral and believed it might be the protective sunscreen that has been recently discussed that corals develop to protect themselves. Anyways am I missing anything?

 

[karsseboom]

Too much light and or feed more. what are your p04?

 

[Boboli]

My green slimer faded as well!
Come to find out my refugium was sucking up all the Iron.
Iron was undetectable with Red Sea coral colors test kit.
Now slimer back to green.
Test kit is key.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

Too much light and or feed more. what are your p04?

Po4 is 0 via Hanna checker. Hopefully moving my lights up will fix the problem as well.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

My green slimer faded as well!
Come to find out my refugium was sucking up all the Iron.
Iron was undetectable with Red Sea coral colors test kit.
Now slimer back to green.
Test kit is key.

I do have a Refugium in addition to to the pellet reactor. Will be interesting to see what my Iron is. Agree testing is key.

 

[Allmost]

Fe, or Iron as mentioned.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

Fe, or Iron as mentioned.

Thanks, just ordered a Iron Hanna checker and will have to post the results when it comes in.

 

[sahin]

Pease do post an update when you get the Hanna checker.

 

[NeilFox]

Too much light and or feed more. what are your p04?

I agree with this. Your corals may be starving and the light may be too strong. The iron thing may be an oversimplification of what's going on.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

I agree with this. Your corals may be starving and the light may be too strong. The iron thing may be an oversimplification of what's going on.

Thanks,
I do feed the tank pretty heavily (frozen, oyster eggs, dry food etc) since I am using a Bio pellet reactor. Will have to see how things look now that I raised the lights up a bit. Guess I will have to tackle this thing one step at a time in phases and see if I can pinpoint the culprit.

 

[sweet ride]

Am tagging along, my greens definetly have lots of room for improvement.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

Here a photo of what I have been talking about. The monti cap on the left had gone from a beautiful green to a light shade ofnyellow over a period of time. Its Still growing but totally different color than when I first introduced it.
I had a great opportunity last week to discuss the problem with Jason Fox and Steve Tyree at the Midwestern coral farmers market. It seemed they also agreed that it was possibly 1 of three things. My bio pellet reactor, spectrum or lack of Iron. Since then, I have removed my bio pellet reactor and closely monitoring for changes. Checked all parameters. (Cal 400+, AlK 8, K 400, phosphates 0, nitrates 0, salinity 1.026) and switched salt brands. I am really starting to believe that it is a result of my current spectrum (phoenix 14k) or lack of Iron due to the previous use of the bio pellet reactor and the refugium utilizing what Iron was left. I did however get suckered into purchasing the Hanna Iron checker. I was told by the online store that it will work for a salt water reef tank. However, what they failed to inform me was that the checker doesn't even come close to measuring the levels of Iron found in natural sea water. More to follow....

 

[tjsailosullivan]

Finally dosed a little of the Iron yesterday and think I am starting to see a little difference. Will have to monitor the color as the week goes on.

 

[tjsailosullivan]

Here's a photo from today after dosing Iron yesterday.