GBTA turning brownish

[kimmi.kim]

I've had my GBTA for about 9 months, and recently it has started to turn brownish... is this normal? how do i get it back to green?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Coral Hind]

What type of lighting do you have?
Duration lights are on for?
What are your water parameters?

 

[alexknight]

I would say the darker the color, the healthier the nem usually is more info and a good picture is worth a million words

 

[kimmi.kim]

I have t5 lighting, duration i turned it down cus i am having a hair algae problem, blue lights are from 4pm - 10pm, daylights are from 5pm-9pm. i asked my LFS, and he said it seems to be normal cus it had just split recently, and it takes about 3 months to recover?

its not really darker in color, its just not green at all. i'll try to take a picture soon.

 

[Coral Hind]

I don't buy the 3 months to recover. In a healthy tank it is inflatted again within 24 hours and practically back to normal and ready to split again in a month.

Because you have cut back on the lighting it is compensating by increasing the zooxanthellae population which is giving it a darker appearance. The high levels of compounds that are fueling the hair algae are also fueling the zooxanthellae increase.

To me cutting back on lighting is just a band aid which makes corals and anemones suffer more then the algae does. You need to remove the fuel. So make sure the skimmer is working at peak performance, use RO water, don't over feed, manually remove as much as you can, employee some good herbivores like tangs. Conch snails are great hair algae eaters.

 

[kimmi.kim]

so should i put my lighting back up to 10 hrs? i'm thinking of getting a lawnmower blenny to help with the algae....since my tank is not big enough for a tang...i did buy a few snails, but after a week there are alot of empty snail shells on the bottom!