What is wrong with my red planet

animalkingdom

animalkingdom

New member
I got a frag of red planet a few months ago and it has steadily declined in health. It started out as a fresh frag from a local reefer from some newer growth on his large colony. Because of this the tips were mostly whitish but the base still had good color.

Over the next months polyp extension decreased, then the color started to fade and now it is a rather bleached looking whitish pink with no polyp extension. I imagine its a light issue but I have a variety of acropora thriving at the same height in the tank. I did do a shorter light acclimation than normal as it was going from a radion led lit tank to my led/T5 lit tank.

Because I know yall will ask my parameters are fine:
Calc: 410
Alk: 7.6
Mag:1250
Phos: undetectable using hanna egg
SG: 1.026
Temp: 79ish
I have a mix of 4 T5s and 3w leds for lights
I have a great skimmer and dont use phosphate remover and only occasionally use GAC
Water changes are either 10% weekly or 20% biweekly

here is a pic:


honestly it looks like its on its way out...or the way colonies sometimes look after shipping stress....just cant figure out what is doing it. some coral that I have at the same light levels are ORA frogskin and ORA Ant Insig

On a side not but it may be related green montis and monti setosa in my frag tank (same system different lighting) have paled out as well. The system is a 58 gal display 40 gal breeder and 20 gallon sump and gets fed a cube of PE mysis every day and some days NLS pellets as well.
 
that is what I was thinking...but am not so sure. I feed a whole cube of mysis every day and then do NLS pellets sometimes on and sometimes off. The glass gets a nice film on it every couple days so nutrients seem to be there.
 
btw do you see the algae on the rocks? its not hair algae just some kind of short filamentous algae similar to what gets on my glass but it indicates to me nutrients are present...maybe their is an imbalance of something. I did loose two fish a while back maybe i just need more fish to get things normal again. I lost a wrasse in the display and a damsel in the 40 gal breeder frag tank. Now their are a large 3'' damsel and a small one in the frag tank and a diamond goby, coral beauty, yellow tang, and two false perculas in the display. with the tang and angel i didn't think it was a light bioload but maybe im wrong
 
here is a shot of some of my better off corals for reference:
ORA Ant insig:

ORA frogskin and monti setosa (a bit pale also):



anything maricultured or wild in my tank looks great btw its just some of the long aquaculture pieces like red planet that look funny
 
For what it's worth I used to feed the heII out of my tank and never test phosphates, I got great growth and color, awesome PE.
 
thanks for the consensus yall...will work on it...haven't really changed the routine other than making the system bigger and adding more live rock so not sure why this happened
 
I also agree animals are starving. Colors are very pale and corallites are "consumed".

I would increase feeding.
 
The RP frag is bleached. You should move it into a low light area so it can repopulate its zoox and start to turn brown. Then slowly bring it back into the light.
I agree with everyone on feeding more, but you should probably lower the intensity or duration of your photoperiod since all your SPS are pale.
 
Yeah, that setosa looks either starved, bleached or both. Mine has the tendency to look like that but in my case, its getting blasted by light. It is on the pinkish side. I was having similar issues with a RP frag that went totally white. I basically decreased my photo period, put it on the bottom of the tank in partial shade, and upped my fish load. Its been a long process, and its starting to color. I have it in a low light area, and I will leave it there for the moment until it starts talking to me. If it goes green, I know its too little light. Whitish or bright pink and its probably too much or on the high side of light. Mine still has poor polyp extension, but looks a lot farther from dead than it used to be.
 
He's got 3 watt leds and 4 t5..
That should be enough to colour up the sps.
Granted red planet gets deeper red and better colour under intense light, the LEDs should be sufficient intensity..
 
more fish, more food, and more poop to feed the corals, I agree with everyone above that the corals are looking a bit pale and starved, FWIW...
Best of luck...
Regards,
 
overexposed said:
Yes it all looks very pale or bleached. What do you have for lighting?
Click to expand...

reefmutt said:
He's got 3 watt leds and 4 t5..
That should be enough to colour up the sps.
Granted red planet gets deeper red and better colour under intense light, the LEDs should be sufficient intensity..
Click to expand...

more speciffically I have 2 ATI blue plus 2 Geisman aquablue special
32 3w bridgelux Royal Blue
13 3w bridgelux cool white
I used to have an equal number of cool white but that was before I added the T5s. They are still in the canopy just turned off. More light can be added if needed but I dont believe its too little light

I think I am onboard with he too few food idea...even though I still have some kind of algae. I lost two fish a while back and never replaced them. The interesting thing is some of my acros look dont have this bleached look. most of the wilds and maricultureds look fine. maybe they do fine with less food in the water column?
 
I would feed more until you get detectable PO4. I fought a long PO4 battle and then finally brought it down...and it got too low...my corals paled up...

I havent used GFO for around 3 week and now have about 0.02ppm PO4 and corals have coloured up a bit more.

You can also dose Amino Acid; Acropower, KZ Amino, Elos etc.

But take it easy with Amino Acids; easy to overshoot and cause algae or BROWN corals.
 
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