Leather colour changed from brown to green

[morrisj2]

I bought a leather 2 weeks ago. When I bought it from the store it was a nice brown colour. After about 2 days in the tank OR less it started to fade from brown to green. About the 10 day mark it was all green. It just shedded its coat about 3-4 days ago. It will open up in the day and it will extend its polyps to feed and did so very much the first few days until I bought some liquid food for it, the name escapes me right now. It would still extend to feed but not as much. Now today after it has shedded its coat now at least 2 days it is still a green colour and much more green than when I first brought it home. It has no polyps extened (in the day right now). I have not feed it for about one week and I thought that maybe I over feed it? I had a small bag of liquid green MAYBE algae or plankton???? not sure what it was as I got it from my fish store because it is the same food they were using...and yes I trust my fish store. I dumped in about a quater of the small bag (not sure the size but it cost me $15 CAN). When I first put him in and than I add more the next day becuase all of his polyps where extended and it is my undertanding that if they are extended than they need to eat. Still a few days later they were extend again, all of them. So I feed again. Now I haven't feed in one week. So now that I'm confused andI have confused you basically I want help to understand why the leather was brown and is now green. It is not shrivled up but is not as large as it was at the start.

I attached 2 pics the first one is a more brown colour and was taken 1 day after it was in my tank and the second one is from just right now...maybe 13 days in my tank.

I use R/o water
I've been running the tank for 1 year but it was running for 6 year before I had it andI took the water and all live rock and crushed coral.

Salinity 1.024
Temp 78.1
PH 8.4
Calcium 450ppm
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 10
Nitrite 0
alkinty - took this a wek ago and can't remember the result but it was at the suggested level from research I did on the net.

The leather is placed in the middle of the tank. the tank is 24" deep. He is about 12" from the light and has about 8" of water between him and the light.

I have 2 clown fish, coral beauty, scopos tang, hippo tang , bangai cardinal, cleaner shrimp, algae blenny (lawnmower), snails, crabs. oh and 4 green chromis.

Lighting is currently 2 65w 22in flo with atnics x2. Upgrading to T5HO 54w x4 48" bulbs this friday...should of been this monday but it is delayed.

Thanks in advanced and again in all the above I really would like to just know why the leather went from brown to a green colour but needed to leave as much info as possible

 

[three-spot]

I'm no expert but corals will just do this sometimes, could be because of stress from shipment (that caused it to be brown), could be from lighting, from going from wild to captive (if this coral was collected from the wild). Another very likely reason is that the coral had excess nutrients available, causing a growth spurt in th zoaxenthalae (pretty sure I butchered the spelling) algae which will cause the coral to look brown and mask it's colors. I had a ric which also changed color like this, more slowly though, changed from orange to blue.