why do my sps back sides turn white?

[johnfallon135]

the back sides that's away from the light are white but the front sides are healthy this is not normal right?

 

[risin]

I get the same thing, but it's much more prevalent in some corals than others. On digis the back pretty much dies, stylo turns white, branching across don't show much difference on the dark side.

I always assumed this was normal.

 

[reefrf]

This is not normal. I'm not sure why though. I'm sure others can chime in. Please let everyone know your set up. How long tank has been tuning, type of lights flow etc. also, recent test results you've had.


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[rtparty]

Are you talking about the back or underneath?

What kind of lights do you have?

 

[echopiece]

I find this more common with LED lights. A lot of my branching coral have very pale or light pigment on the underside where the LED lights don't touch. LED lights are very directional and don't spread out like fluorescent or MH. Also, do you have a sandbed? I am running a dark BB so this might attribute to the light not bouncing off of the white sand.

 

[johnfallon135]

true i'm running bare bottom and leds and no i meant back not underneath rtparty i know the difference from a dying coral lol

 

[gus6464]

It's white because it's not getting any light. Welcome to the world of LEDs and shadowing.

 

[rtparty]

true i'm running bare bottom and leds and no i meant back not underneath rtparty i know the difference from a dying coral lol

I said nothing about a dying coral. I was wondering if you meant the under side when you said back side of the coral. Pretty simple question

If it is the underside, welcome to LEDs. The bottom of the corals will lose pigment since they receive no light. :blown:

 

[johnfallon135]

really? sounds nuts! so every led user will have white underside sps's?

 

[rtparty]

really? sounds nuts! so every led user will have white underside sps's?

In my experience LEDs were the worst for this but even MH and T5 setups will see white on the underside of corals. Shading is inevitable at some point

 

[jda]

This is a pretty common theme with LEDs when frags start to turn into colonies. Later on in life, it is also quite typical to see them start to STN from the base up.

Anybody can keep frags, but colonies are a different thing altogether. This is one of the reasons that I suggest that people who want to keep SPS under LED seek out people who have colonies upon colonies and get their experiences rather than the many who have frags so small that you can still see the base of the plugs but claim that their lights can grow anything.

The colonies on the edges of my tanks sometimes are duller on the underside with MH, but they are not like what you are seeing - they still have the main color of the coral and polyps out, just lighter in color. I agree with rtparty that this can happen with all light forms, but nothing like it does with LED.

 

[CoralNutter]

Yeah this is common with leds yhe best way to combat it is direction your fixtures to get those areas covered and add reefbrite strips or similar at an angle to get light to the bases and usersides of the coral.

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