Nano Setup lighting question (coral coloration)

[jasno999]

I am not 100% sure where this post is best suited to be. However since this is for a Nano style tank here it is.


I have a 10 gallon tank (normal tank). I took it and decided to make it into a reef tank (nano style).

Long story short it has been up and running for quite some time.

I have a HOB filter and 12 or so lbs of live rock in it. For lighting I have a coralife powerquad (96W) and currently it has a 10K bulb but used to have a 50/50 bulb.

My issue is this. I have a bunch of different corals in the tank but for some reason they all seem to appear pinkish in color. I understand my bubble coral and my leather are normally a pale pink or skin tone. But all of my other corals seem to become pink or skin toned in color after they get in my tank. Mushrooms I purchased at the store that I thought were gree in color are more of a red of pink in the tank. But polyups have maintained some red and green but they too are not super bright. My zenia is pinkish but that is typical.

However I jsut added a Trumpet coral that was sold as a neon green mouth and purple exterior and when I put it in the tank it looks liek it is all pink.

Could this be due to my lighting in some way? What can I do? The same stuff happened when I had a 50/50 bulb in my 96W powerquad.

 

[scoobasteve]

you are running almost 10 watts per gallon in your tank. Corals need light-but come on. 4-6 watts per gallon is susually opttimal, so close to ten per gallon is probably causing a bit of a bleaching effect. also i would pop the 50/50 back in there. Without actinic lighting your corals wont tend to flourescents as much.

 

[supraeli]

sorry scooba, but powerquads over 10 gallons are actually pretty common. ive kept a variety of corals under there with no ill effects.

i eventually upgraded to a 150W metal halide over the 10 gallon, again with no ill effects.

its not a problem of too much light, its because you have a 10K bulb in there. 10K is the temperature rating for the color output of the bulb, and it is leaning towards a more yellowish output, which is why your corals dont show as nice colors.

50/50 will have more blue wavelength light which shows off coral colors better, as well as causes flourescence, as noted by scooba. it may not have been apparent with your old bulb, because power compact bulbs tend to rapidly shift in wavelength over time. they must be replaced every 6 months or so.

try a new 50/50 bulb, it should be much better.

 

[Zero-2-Sixty]

i agree, a new 50/50 should perk things right up

 

[engine10ff]

Not trying to hijack the tread but I have a question. I have a 20g H with 130 w fixture. 1 Daylight 10K and 1 Actinic (65w ea). Should I replace them with two 50/50 when the time come to replace?

 

[smketyr]

Engine 10, no the color combo you have is good, 10K for growth and 50/50 for color.

 

[kass03]

a 50/50 bulb is half 10k and half actinic.
engine10 if you replace your 10k and actinic with 2 50/50's it's basically the same light.
With 1 bulb of each you can do a better dawn/dusk effect with timers.

As for Jasno I agree with above posters that if you only have 1 bulb go back to a 50/50. The colors will look much better.

kass

 

[jasno999]

I had the same problems before when I had the 50/50 bulb on the tank. I jsut don't think that is the issue.

Even the bushroom turns a greenish color at night when the lifghts are off. When I turn the lights on he stays green for a while but then loses the color and goes to a redish pink.

He did the same thing under the 50/50 bulbs.

I can try it but I don;t think tht is the issue.

 

[Agu]

I have two tanks with the 50/50 powerquad bulb , a softies tank and an LPS tank.

IME the color issue you're dealing with is an issue of both light and coral species.

Not all corals come from the same depth in the ocean and the water doesn't have the same clarity from location to location. I recall reading that some of the LPS for example are collected from muddy bottoms with high turbidity. Although they're in relatively shallow water they don't get a lot of light. Basically it's a case of putting corals adapted to different lighting and jamming them all together under the same light. It's esp noticable in a nano where there's not a lot of choices when it comes to placement.

I'm having the same issue in my LPS tank. A frag of the euphyllia in my avatar has turned pink (but one in the shade is still brightly colored), as have two hammers and a green open brain. After I replaced the bulb in July things did not improve.

In my opinion and my experience you have too much light and it's bleaching out your corals (GASP, too much light :lol: ).

I have since put a glass top on the LPS tank to reduce light and the brain and one of the frogspawn have noticably colored up.

Of course this begs the question, which color is the natural color?