Stylophora and Acropora Coral self-shading

[Tripod1404]

Hello guys, I have a purple polyp Stylophora frag that is attached to the live rock at such an angle that the one side of the coral is shaded. Its is staying almost at a 45 degrees angle and so basically the underside of that 45 degrees is not getting direct light. I have led+t5ho combo and this particular part of the tank corresponds mostly to the leds and since led lights do not scatter much, shelf shadowing is strong. Coral is growing really fast and has full polyp extension, but the selfshaded part lost color. Is is still showing full polyp extension but both the polyps and the skeleton is brown. Rest of the coral is purple. Is this normal? I dont want to move it because it loves that place. I recently added an acropora (ora green planet) close to it. It is also at that 45 degrees angle and selfshadows itself. it is new and there no color lost just yet (it arrived in pretty bad shape but it is recovering). In general,should you be worried about the placement angle when putting SPS frags to a tank or will the corals adjust anyways?

Here are some pictures of the corals, you can see the shaded part that has polyps but lost color.

 

[outssider]

one of the pitfalls of led. If you think you got shading problems now, wait a couple/few years when your stilo is as big as a melon......stilo's grow fast....

 

[MichaelW]

Yeah what he said. By the time my stylo was about a nerd football size almost all the underneath looked dead, but the whole top looked great and continued to grow more and more, but then more and more would look shaded underneath. This was when I was all led. Cant say if adding 4 t5 bulbs helped or not as I got rid of the stylo to make room ( then had something happen in my tank where I lost almost all sps so I have plenty of room now anyway)

 

[ComforablyNumb]

I have 2 Kessils lighting my tank, nothing else... and stylo's grow great. I too attached the frags at an angle like you did, as you can see in the first pic. Yours will probably self-correct as mine did.

frags pic from a year ago:


same frags, 6 months later:


Same frags, a year after installing (last month):




As I said, I have kessils only on this tank...and as you can see, any shading "damage" is rather negligible, is only seen on the underside bottom of the coral in a very minor way and does not affect any of the growing branches to any extent at all. In 2 more years time, who knows...but I am not very worried.

 

[mcgyvr]

yep.. welcome to LEDs.. its not really a problem and the coral will take care of itself just fine..