Purple Montipora Digitata color

[barjam]

So the purple montipora digitata is very dark brown with alot of PE in my main tank and a nice light purple in my refugium with reduced PE. The water is shared but the lighting is different. Both the refugium and the display have roughly 32x turnover.

Display has 2x250 Phoenix MH & 2x54 Blue Plus T5. Refugium has 4x54 T5 (2 blue plus 2 daylight). The corals are the same distance from the lights (14 inches or so from the bulbs) in either tank. The phoenix bulbs use cheap hello light DE reflectors and all T5 bulbs use ice cap reflectors.

Most people say purple monti requires a ton of light to turn purple. Are there variants that turn more brown with more light? If not then it seems odd that 108 watts of daylight T5 put out more light than 500 watts of Phoenix bulbs, crappy reflectors or not.

 

[Frick]

Mine doesn't look too great under the Phoenix either. Under my 400w Radium it does great. Back in the day when I first started SPS the Purp digi was the firs SPS I had under two 175 Ushio 10Ks and it was damn near solid pink/purple. I kind of wonder if it isn't more light that it needs but more of the spectrum. At least more around the 600nm range.

 

[cjtice]

Mine looks great about 8 inches under water (12" from lights) directly under blue plus lamps. If it is directly under anything else, it turns brown.

 

[barjam]

Yea, mine ~ 12 inches from a blue plus bulb on both tanks. The difference is on the display tank it is also under a phoenix bulb Maybe the phoenix bulb is messing it up.

That doesn't make much sense though. The phoenix has a huge 450nm spike just like the blue plus bulb.

 

[barjam]

Frick, check out this link at the bottom. Looks like the only place where the Radium has more is below 380 or so and at 420. Interesting.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9343311

He goes on to mention that the radium had more ultraviolet than the unshielded phoenix. Interesting.

 

[smalltime]

250 radium 10 inches off water and digi 6 inches under water

 

[SPSEMPIRE]

I've always noticed a significant difference in the nutrient level more than anything, even when frags were grown under two different identical systems but with different lights. In a lower nutrient system, these guys really lightened up for me.

 

[barjam]

The two systems are plumbed together to nutrients should be similar. The refugium is probably a tiny bit higher locally nutrient wise because I don't keep it as clean (bare bottom) as the main tank.

I started feeding heavier to see what would happen this week and the base of the coral is starting to purple up a tiny bit in the main tank. That doesn't really make sense though. More nutrients would mean more brown I would think.

Here is a picture of my tank, does that look like too much nutrients to you? Sorry for the terrible picture. I will try to get a better one tonight.

 

[NewSchool04]

Mine about 12" below my T5's. This has always been a set and forget type of coral for me, place it anywhere in the tank and just try to keep it from getting out of hand!

 

[Stanley-Reefer]

If you have good sized fish and snails, they'll break these beauties off when they start to get big. They are VERY fragile!!! I have frags of these, peach, green, and forest fire all over both tanks!

 

[HandOfGod]

I gave up on mine, it was 3" under the T-5's and would not color up, when I moved it lower it did even worse, and I tried it in all different kinds of flow areas. All my other SPS and LPS are fine and colorful.

 

[barjam]

I placed two chunks of yellow base/purple poly encrusting monti that was on the bottom of my display into refugium (on the bottom). One was shaded by chaeto a bit and it turned red. The other is not shaded and it bleached (it will recover just fine though). Very strange.

 

[benzzz]

250 radium 10 inches off water and digi 6 inches under water

WOW That looks amazing!