SPS Color Issue...mine are a little pastel

cody6766

cody6766

Super Best Friends!
Premium Member
I'm having a little color issue with my SPS corals. They're all growing nicely and polyped out but their colors are pretty pale. My green birds nest is mostly tan with a hint of green at the tips and my montis and acros are just pastel versions of their original colors.

I feed once a day and most everything is readily eaten by the fish. The left overs are picked off my my small army of nassarius snails. I dose 2 part regularly and add some Mag when needed, I have a skimmer and chaeto ball in my fuge and about 60lbs of rock in my system. The tank is the 40br in my build thread, lightly stocked with a ton of extra water in the system.

Ca - 420-450
Alk - pretty solidly at 9
Mag - 1330'ish IIRC (haven't tested that one in a while)
Nitrate - ~5, all other nitrogen cmpds are 0

So, what normally causes pale SPS with good growth?It's not isolated to just he acros, montis, etc. It's showing up across all types.

Oh, lighting...
I have a 6bulb tek light with 3 ATI Blue Plus bulbs, an Aquablue Special and a Coralife actinic bulb. The 6th slot is empty. Burning all ATI bulbs in all 6 holes left my LPS looking for shade. My SPS sit mid-tank in a 16" deep tank with the light about 7-8" off the water.
 
I just tested, here are the results...
Mag - 1200
Ca - 420
Alk - a little low at around 7.

So, things are a little off. I don't think they've been off for too long and the color issue has been going on since I moved down here
 
Are you feeding your corals other then fish poop? Just seen some threads with the same issue, and came to the conclusion that there bio load was really small. Just throwing that out there.
 
Mine did that due to lowish alk. As soon as I got my alk to 8.5-9 the colors started to come right back. My alk was lower then 7 though.
 
I have some coral frenzy I use from time to time. I don't use it all the time, but I probably do once a week or so. I'll get the alk up and see what happens after a while.
I need to step my water changes back up as well. I've been letting them slide since I started flight training. I don't think it's really related to that since the color issue has been going on longer than the training, but it can't hurt to do things right again!
 
Cody, you can try some amino acid supplements(Brightwell, KZ, Fauna Marin have a great products), or try to feed more(I use some Reed and FM products) Also what salt do you use?
 
No on the amino acids, I've never dosed them
I may try feeding more since I have plenty of coral frenzy. That's small enough for SPS to grab, right?
I went through a bag of Brightwell salt because the LFS was out of Reef Crystals. I've used Reef Crystals for about 90% of the time I've been reefing and am using it now.

Oh, water is my own RO/DI, 0ppm TDS.
 
Cody,

seems to have been slipped over here except by evsalty, but I would really watch the stability of the alk for unhappy looking sps--- esp sinc yours slipped from 9 to 7.

Then the mag and calc. jmt
 
I'll keep an eye on it and see what happens along the way.

Has anyone been successful in setting up a drip system for alk? I don't have the budget for a doser or reactor. I could get it stable, check my drop rate and then set something to drip DIY alk mix over the day. It seems simple in concept, but very prone to failure to me.
 
How often do you do water changes? And how old are you ATI bulbs in your Tek hood? Alot depends on how long you leave your lights on too.
We run a Tek as well over a 75 and I have ran into the problem you have before,just thought id try and give you a few ideas on other things to check.
 
I also had this problem and actually think it was my phosphates. Since I got rid of them, the color has slowly been coming back in my sps. Particularly the montis
 
Waterchanges are usually done every week, sometimes 2 weeks. I have about 60g of water in the system with only 5 small fish, so I have a pretty good water/bioload buffer for a missed water change.

The bulbs are around 4-5 months old.
 
Well, no pics yet...I've been very lazy with the camera. I've been dosing daily since my last post and have already noticed better PE on my acros. My montis look the same (which was good despite being pale) and the colors havent changed (I wouldn't expect them to this early on), and I'm seeing faster growth in my birds nest. I just hope the colors come back soon, but the better PE and growth is encouraging.

The LPS sofites and maxima clam are all happy and healthy as usual. I'll try to get pics soon .
 
FTS%20Left%20-%20Nov%202010.jpg


FTS%20Right%20-%20Nov%202010.jpg


Here are the pics as of tonight. I'm wondering if the lighting is just too intense over the tank. The breeder is only 16" deep and my bulbs are only about 6" off the water's surface. I'm using 3 ATI blue plus bulbs, an aquablue special and a coralvue actinic in a TEK light
 
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