It's all about the light- buyer beware

N

nashorn

New member
For sale : arm or a leg
Picture taken under 400 or 600 w radium 20K with supplemental lighting.
No Photoshop
WYSIWYG



When it arrives
Taken with 12k


Must have brown out in shipping. Your tank water is out of whack. Are you running 400W or 600 radium? you placed it too high , too low, must be stressed give it a few month and it'll color up......etc etc

All true statements (except I dont have MH but if I did it would have been turned off) I blasted this with the UV and a hand held black light (supplemental lighting)to get the colors. Taken from iphone with no adjustments.


Got to run saw someone selling a Orange Passion frag
 
Most SPS will brown out in shipping. I have bought lots and when they come in they are all a little pale. As a matter of fact, the ones that come in still colored I have always had issues with (foster,smith). Usually after 3 days in QT with good light they pop right back and after getting into the DT they get even better.

Yes, Lighting does matter but just because an SPS is a different color when you get it doesn't always mean they deliberately mislead you. I have had them change colors from the time I got them from a friend and drove across town and got them in the tank.

Also, I make it a habit of buying the $10 and $20 brown corals at the stores no one wants. Usually within a week they come back to life and are more hardy and healthy than the really pretty ones that you buy and then the melt for no reason what so ever other than you moved them.
 
Browning out in shipping? Why do the wild Aussie corals come in looking amazing? lol
 
I got a weird brown/green acro a few weeks back from a guy...it turned into a tricolor validia. It has started to color up and its AMAZING. the colors are insane. The tips are turning Bright purple and bright blue and the rest of the body is turning this amazing bright green/purple. You need to give them time and also the fist picture looks terrible...I would never buy a coral with a picture like that.
 
GTR said:
Browning out in shipping? Why do the wild Aussie corals come in looking amazing? lol
Click to expand...

Exactly. I've shipped and received SPS corals nicely coloured up...its BS that corals lose colour whilst in transit.

Its an excuse...the corals were either illuminated with a high amount of blue light and then photoshopped more...or the original coral is now brown...those are the usual suspicions.
 
I have ordered a lot of corals this winter. A lot came in bleached or faded color. Mostly the corals that were recently wild were light or bleached looking.

The aquacultured corals that have been grown for generations did much better and had much more color.

Even the orders that were half half. The newer stuff that was wild looked worse than the wilds that had been fragged from for a few years over.

The main thing is to be aware of who takes the pictures to accurately represent their corals. Some use so much blue lighting it misrepresents what the coral will look like in your tank. You can NOT expect these corals to come in looking like nuclear coral colors, especially when a large amount are fresh wilds that are being cut.
Though from the right supplier and the right care a lot of these corals can be just as or more beautiful than the original pictures. Just not so neon.
 
Holding color and long term success is a different story. Losing color in a cross country shipment is highly unlikely.
I've seen countless shipments come in that looked similar to this one.
image_8.jpg
 
Yea but frag small frags of thoes colonies and ship them in cold weather and they will loose some color. Unless its a hearty piece. I have found a lot of the nicer acropora with rare colors to be a lot more finiky than your average coral. Some of the nice corals just loose color after fragging for some reason, but the average one or two colored coral does better.
Some places may use this as a tact to sell average frags but it does happen. Especially to corals that have been shipped once then cut sat for a few days and shipped again.

And colonies like that loose color really bad if housed at LFS, that have inadequate conditions they are keeping them in. There are many variables to this conversation.
 
Piper27 said:
And colonies like that loose color really bad if housed at LFS, that have inadequate conditions they are keeping them in. There are many variables to this conversation.
Click to expand...

Exactly, these kinds of corals have already started losing their color the day they arrive and will continue for the days of shipments because half the vendors ship two day mail.

Whole colonies hold up pretty well in a simple over night shipment "across country" but fresh cut frags will usually loose a lot.

These chop shops dont care, they get the coral in and take photos then, then shove them under a 10,000k light and less than clean water and sell them fast and throw away the rest.

You have to be aware of where you are getting them.


That being said, I have purchased some $10 brown sticks that have grown into super nice pieces over the years.
 
I'm not talking about the $10-100 frags.
The color is mostly true in those.
I'm talking about the Ebay frags and some of those $250+ for a 1/2 in frags with the insane colors. I don't want to list deals names but I hope you guys know which ones I'm talking about.
Guess the point I want to make is the colors in the picture I posted are true but only in a certain light.
Most of the arco I buy are the $10 frags and I love to finding that brown frag with just a slight tint of color.
 
Also got to remember the pics of frags are usually when the dealer first gets them. Then how ever long they sit in their holding tanks can affect their colors. Some may get better or just the reverse. A lot of times you'll see frags on "sale" because they start to lose their colors and by the time they get to you they are so stressed that I've seen first hand what happens.

At the moment I have 3 Acropora frags in my tank that are bleached and slowly are getting their color back. 1 frag in particular when I got it was a yellowish/orange with green polyps and now about 3 months later appears to be turning purple/blue/green with green polyps.
 
That coral likes low light in the blue spectrum. When I run my MH or 12K T5 it looks like the 2nd pic when I run blue led only it looks similar to the first pic. Not a surprise certain corals and its florescent are illuminated by certain types and spectrum. This is why I run MH/T5 and LED. From UV to 660
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
Too much light? T5 halide
2
Replies
20
Views
2K
JCOLE
JCOLE
pblogic
Returning to the hobby - could use tank suggestions
Replies
11
Views
1K
Reefing102
Reefing102
B
JBJ Arctica 1/10 hp Chiller Modification for External Control
Replies
9
Views
2K
griss
griss
B
Open source robot for testing and supplementation
Replies
10
Views
1K
Benoit T
B
isseym328
Getting Out of Hobby 300G Shutdown : WYSIWYG Fish, SPS, LPS, Softies colonies and frags common to rare in So Cal
Replies
1
Views
1K
isseym328
isseym328
Back
Top