Tricolor SPS turning green

[R@ck78]

My tricolor valadia has turned green. What could be causing this? Phosphates? I have GFO running in a nextreef reactor along with carbon.

1.025 Salt
420 Ca
9.5 Alk
PH 8.1

Thanks
Mark-

 

[jmaiello04]

Mark -

All of your stats look good. I would have to guess that it is your lighting that has changed the coloration. That being said:

I have a nice tricolor valida colony that I started from a 2" frag about 6 months ago. The colony is now larger than a baseball. It has kept its coloration beautifully.

I managed to break a small 1" piece off of it after I had it for about a month. This new piece is all green, and has encrusted the rock I glued it on heavily. Just this month, one of the branches started to turn ice blue toward the tip, and it is finally starting to resemble the parent colony.

My tank is lit bit T5's, and my water parameters are very similar to yours.

 

[R@ck78]

Yea its weird. It has encrusted the plug and is growing pretty well. I have an 8 bulb ATI T5 fixture, so its getting plenty of light. That being said maybe too much. I might try to move it lower.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

 

[jmaiello04]

Sounds like it is doing very well if it has encrusted. Moving it to a lower location/lower light might help it color up. If not, just give it time.

Jared

 

[dowtish]

I have T5's as well and it seems that quite a few of my acros turn green initially and then once new growth kicks in they start to color up correctly. It always seems that they do this especially if they came from a tank with different lighting than mine.

Typed from my phone because I have nothing better to do.

 

[smartandfast]

I have the same problem with my tri color. I believe it has to do with flow and lightings.

 

[Bela N]

I do not know for sure, just throwing out ideas. It may just be natural variation. I have three different tri-colours from 3 different sources. The one from Darry V is a killer blue, while the others have nice blue tips but the base on one is an olive green & the other a deep forest green. That may also apply to the growth pattern. The olive green grows up & branches while the forest green encrusts. Most corals especially milli, digi & pocillopora all come in a huge variety of colours and intensities. Could the zooanthellea population be different?

 

[Guttungen]

sounds to me like an overflow of zooxanthella do to high nutrients. Might also be lack of stability or flow.... I got one valida that been green for "ages", and that piece have been moved around a bit to find the "perfect spot" in my eyes. Highest placed coral I got, still green. But a bit of the base encrusted on the last spot is growing up in beautiful colours.... Stability in every way, and patients. That particular coral is nomatter what turning green every now and then. Might be my sloppy reefing.

 

[Bela N]

sounds to me like an overflow of zooxanthella do to high nutrients.

This may be true for R@ck78 but that does not work in my situation. The pale green & the DarrylV supper blue are right next to each other. These 2 corals get the same flow, same light & same water parameters, so why are they so different to each other?

 

[dots]

Pics really do help in this. Yes, green on a exposed based is an indicator of high phosphates. Phosphates can be a bane.