Tips on bonsai color loss

[tenurepro]

Hi all. I have a 2.5 month frag that was sold to me as purple valida bonsai. It's was a nice purple with neon green polyps. It looked like this

But a month later it now looks like this

So very pale. But other than color change, it is still showing great polyp extension and it managed to put out a 2 cm crust around the frag in the last 2 month. Actually, it has shown the greatest degrees of encrustation relative to other acros in the tank. Other acros are keeping their color.
It's a 250 Red Sea reefer, 3 month old. Salinity at 35 ppm, alk at 11.5, ca 400, mg 1400, nitrates undetectable, phosphates are really low (<0.03 ppm)
Lights are radions xr15pro running for 12 h with max intensity of 85% at 18.5 k from 10 to 5 pm. Medium bio load. High flow with two mp10's and vectra return pump

So what do you guys think about the cause of this color change ? Too much light? Too little light? After much deliberation I decide to move frag to bottom of tank to see if it recovers, but not sure if light is the culprit.
Your thoughts would be highly appreciated



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[Maritimer]

Everybody needs at least a little something to eat now and then - including zooxanthellae. I'm hearing that a few ppm (3-5 or so) of nitrate can be a wonderful thing for coral colors.

(I have the opposite problem with nitrates . . . )

~Bruce

 

[rovster]

Yeah it's starving. That said I find these "bonsai" corals have the best deepest color in low light. It does look healthy so aside from maybe upping the feeding or trying some aminos I'd let things carry on.

 

[minus9]

Agree, more food and less light.

 

[MichaelW]

Just looks a little hungry but otherwise good. Keeping low no3 and po4 is fine as long as you are still giving them a good source of say aminos etc. Low values with little to no food can be a problem.

 

[tenurepro]

Thanks all. So I moved to bottom which should fix light issue if light was the problem. Was doing amino feeding (acro power) once a week but will up that to twice a week and see what will happen


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[spkennyva]

You may consider allowing your alk to drop to around 8 dkh. Keeping alk above 11 is feasible, but there may be less margin if things get tweaked.

 

[ezcompany]

ime acropower did little to improve colors, stabilized alk (at 7-8dkh close to nsw) and feeding the tank a lot seems to be helping me more.
it's probably a combination of everything though.

 

[tenurepro]

Good points also. Will update the post in a few weeks to see if the bonsai colors up


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[outssider]

what type of light was the frag under where you bought it ??

 

[tenurepro]

T5 I think?


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[Grant W]

Def lower the alk to 8ish if you are near ulns and feed the fish a bit.

 

[tenurepro]

so, after some thought, and based on a few comments from here and on the other 'forum', i think it is the combination of high light, high alk, and low nutrients that are causing some of the loss of color on my acros. I tried to follow redsea's reef foundation dosing program; it has several guidelines depending on goals; i tried to follow the high SPS growth program, with Alk and Ca goals of 12.6 dkh and 465 ppm respectively... i knew it was higher than most people keep their tanks, but hey, who doesn't want fast sps growth, right? I think however their program was meant to be used in conjunction with other redsea programs (such as nopox and reef energy) with the goal of maintaining a high nutrient environment that will allow sps to exploit the excess alk and CA and high light conditions. I think for my tank with very low bioload and almost undetectable nitrates and phosphates, the sps got too stressed by high light and high alk but little food.

So... i've decided to do the following:
1. cut lights from 85% to 65%
2. reduce alk from 11.8 (now) to about 8 over a few days
3. try to up nutrients a bit. i already feed fish twice a day with authofeeder (which feeds in excess), but now i wll try to also feed more amino acid and sps type food.

I've decided to try to stick to these for the next month and see what happens to the bonsai, and the two other frags that are growing paler. In an ideal world, i would change one parameter at a time, but i really think that the problems are a 'multiple stressor' type of situation. Will report back in a month

 

[minus9]

Sounds like a good plan, be careful how fast you drop the alk. 4 days is even better, but that's just me.

 

[md fishes]

My bonsai looked the exact same way. Moved him to the middle of my tank and feed reef roids twice a week and it really colored up. Actually my biggest issue with my other acros was that I was under feeding. Once I fed the tank a lot my colors are so much better.