Please Help Diagnose My Poor SPS Color/Growth !

[reefdiculous]

Well... I took the best photos I could with my crappy camera!

I've attached:

Bird of Paradise: it's has a very pale yellow body and pale purple polyps
Generic Bird's Nest: it's just white now, but with brown polyps
Red Dragon: very, very pale pink body with yellow polyps
Green Slimer: pretty green still, but the under body is turning white if that makes sense

 

[dancewithethan]

Too much light

Too much light

I had the same issues with my corals. Everything I put into my tank would bleach or really pale. It turns out that my Led light setting was too high at 60% I was told to turn it down to 20-30%. I dumped the LED light and went back to T5. after a month, everything color up nicely. good luck

 

[kevin_e]

Low light causes brown coral, ime. Pale coral are a result of low nutrients.

 

[reefdiculous]

Low light causes brown coral, ime. Pale coral are a result of low nutrients.

So maybe....

Low Light = browning out of colors
High Light = bleaching / pale colors & maybe burnt tips
Low Nutrients = bleaching / pale colors & maybe burnt tips

Since my light right now is only at 50% for 4 hours of the 8 hour cycle, I guess that's another vote for focusing on low nutrients

 

[twon8]

When you say, you run "one" full out, you mean you have the same light as mine (kessil a360w) but at 100% intensity?

Yes. I have the a360we so I beliEve mine is stronger. Right above a 4'x2'x1' tall frag tank at full intensity full white

You can see the reflection of the kessil in this shot

I say feed more and turn your lights up

My system is fed very heavily, 6-10 times a day so I am not low nutrient. I have a lot of fish but I do have a big skimmer and only run Gfo a few times a year

 

[reefdiculous]

I say feed more and turn your lights up

Hey twon8,

Thanks for getting back to my question and posting pics. I think I'll try your advice and see how it goes. I'll try to report back in a month or so! Hopefully with good news

 

[Icefire]

Calculating ramping vs power, you run an average of 93 watts on a 90g
I run 240 Watts on a 60g cube, at near 90% for nearly 10 hours

So push them near 100% and lower the sps to acclimate them.

 

[rovster]

Lots of potential issues here. First thing I'd do is pull the gfo and carbon. Leave them offline until you see a need to bring them back online. Your fish load is also light. I'd add more fish, a lot more but do it slowly. Last thing I'll mention is even though pH drops at night, alk consumption drops at night. So you are adding alk when corals least need it and not when they do. I doubt this is a problem but I'm just mentioning it. My display is 100 gal and I have 2 tangs, goby, 5 anthias, 2 basslets, 2 clowns, a dart fish, hawk, large wrasse and I want to add more lol. I do carbon dose but not a ton and my nutrients stay in check. I do agree you want 2-5 nitrate and I like phosphate less than 0.03.

I do urge you to only change one thing at a time and wait a few weeks before changing another until you figure it out.