Acro color has been bothering me. Suggestions?

[Jake_the_reefer]

I'm also guessing I shouldn't run my skimmer anymore haha.

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

Final question. Should I target feed these guys til they get color or just broadcast. (Powdered food and amino)

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Best of luck! Following to see how this turns out.

 

[jda]

If you are sure that you need to chase nitrate, then do other things as well so that you can find an actual solution. Micro has no ability to use nitrate, so having more than a trace is worthless to the corals and zoox, but can do some other things for your tank like poisoning dinos, matting bacteria, grow macro algae and other. Ammonia/ammonium is where zoox get their nitrogen, so feed more and have the fish do their thing. Most people who have high nitrate who got them there by feeding just don't realize that it was the available ammonia/ammonium that made a difference and not having higher nitrate - they could have removed all of the nitrate with macro algae, or whatever, and had the same experiences. Throughput and availability is where the prize is, not residual levels. There is a large group of parrots whose first posts are about "nutrients" when they no idea what they are really posting about or what those things really do and do not do.

If you have even 1 or 2 ppb on a Hannah Ultra Low Phosphorous Checker, then this is enough. More won't hurt to a point, but after a while, calcification and be limited.

Most color issues are because of light - lack of spectrum, usually, moreso than lack of intensity. The biggest issue right now is people running too much blue for too long. You need other colors to color coral. Every bit of spectrum from 350 to 850 is usable and the more than you can supply this, the better the colors will be. In general, use daylight to render color in coral and then blue-it-up to your eyes delight for viewing.

The skimmer is a super important piece of equipment. It removes metals bound to organics and also does gas exchange. I strongly caution you to not stop running it without understanding the other things will be missed.

You can likely just make the corals look better by feeding more and also

 

[Ike]

Final question. Should I target feed these guys til they get color or just broadcast. (Powdered food and amino)

Amino ac ids aren't food or nutrients, but them breaking down probably will contribute, which may be why some people see positive effects, not because the corals are directly benefiting. They might help, but not how you think and you're just padding the pockets of supplement companies (lots of snake oil in this hobby) more than anything. However, a lot of people buy into it because they see a positive effect and they then think their corals need amino acid supplements to thrive, which simply isn't true.

Personally, I like to broadcast and feed high protein flake foods heavily, grinding them with my fingers to get a wide range of particle size, but I'm weird and do things different from a lot of people. I seem to do ok...

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

If you are sure that you need to chase nitrate, then do other things as well so that you can find an actual solution. Micro has no ability to use nitrate, so having more than a trace is worthless to the corals and zoox, but can do some other things for your tank like poisoning dinos, matting bacteria, grow macro algae and other. Ammonia/ammonium is where zoox get their nitrogen, so feed more and have the fish do their thing. Most people who have high nitrate who got them there by feeding just don't realize that it was the available ammonia/ammonium that made a difference and not having higher nitrate - they could have removed all of the nitrate with macro algae, or whatever, and had the same experiences. Throughput and availability is where the prize is, not residual levels. There is a large group of parrots whose first posts are about "nutrients" when they no idea what they are really posting about or what those things really do and do not do.

If you have even 1 or 2 ppb on a Hannah Ultra Low Phosphorous Checker, then this is enough. More won't hurt to a point, but after a while, calcification and be limited.

Most color issues are because of light - lack of spectrum, usually, moreso than lack of intensity. The biggest issue right now is people running too much blue for too long. You need other colors to color coral. Every bit of spectrum from 350 to 850 is usable and the more than you can supply this, the better the colors will be. In general, use daylight to render color in coral and then blue-it-up to your eyes delight for viewing.

The skimmer is a super important piece of equipment. It removes metals bound to organics and also does gas exchange. I strongly caution you to not stop running it without understanding the other things will be missed.

You can likely just make the corals look better by feeding more and also

Thank you for the information. My biggest push to removing the skimmer is that in my experience on my nano tanks they have always lead to an environment devoid of everything resulting in a massive dino outbreak. Since removing my skimmer on my 10g I've not seen dino. I'm going to rely More so on water changes as I don't feed my tank much in general even with fish

 

[jda]

A couple of small live rock pieces from the actual ocean will give you more diversity than you could ever want. Nanos need this more than anything. Dinos were never a huge issue until people wanted to have sterile and cheap setups.

You should feed the tank. All of this will be for naught if you are not regularly feeding the fish.

 

[Justin Aretz]

There is an infinite number of factors that could be at play. First, I would consider your par low for an 8 hour photo period, and ensure your spectrum is aligned with the communities understanding of zooxanthelles needs.

I would send out an ATI ICP test and download the Reef Moonshiners Dosing Calculator. It is likely that your trace elements are low, or out of whack. Compare your results to the Reef Moonshiners Handbook. I’m not suggesting you need to use this product, but I can guarantee it will help with your problem if this is not pest related. After all, we are caring for our water far more than we are actually caring for our corals. On that topic, I’ve had colonies lose color and seem otherwise unaffected during AEFW and red/black bug infestations (I bring in wilds regularly).

Do you add anything except 2 part? Do you do small and frequent water changes? Do you feed often? Do you dose aminos? Do you dose vitamins? No single “thing” is ever usually the problem. I’d agree that your po4 needs to be a minimum of .08 and no3 a minimum of 5-10. Just as importantly, the throughput of these nutrients is necessary. Happy to help if I can, my messages are open.

 

[vetteguy53081]

What are some causes:

False salinity where salinity is higher than your gage is showing *calibrate)
Too much flow
White light intensity too bright
Red Bugs
Alk spike or too high
Mag too high
Insufficient nutrients
High nitr5ates or phosphates

Testing will answer alot of chemistry concerns

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

What are some causes:

False salinity where salinity is higher than your gage is showing *calibrate)
Too much flow
White light intensity too bright
Red Bugs
Alk spike or too high
Mag too high
Insufficient nutrients
High nitr5ates or phosphates

Testing will answer alot of chemistry concerns

Salinity is set. I recalibrated and tested,
White light is pretty low so I'm not sure that's it.
I did inspect for redbugs because a previous tank had them so I'm good on them
Alk is 9.0 and has been steady
Nutrients is 100% lacking. So im thinking that's it

 

[jda]

Amino acids can provide SPS with things. However, there are some caveats. First, nobody knows if the aminos available is supplements are the right ones - nobody will say what is in them. Some of the better ones are quite hard to shelve for long periods of time. Second, single cell bacteria and other microorganisms in the water column or on the surface can easily and readily use nearly all amino acids too... and there is more surface area and water than acro tissue in most tanks.

It is most likely that dosing aminos is only really helping once the single cell stuff processes it and then the corals get what is left over... not too different than just feeding your fish.

All of this said, aminos are not food and provide no energy, just another form of building blocks. Light is still the only true form of food by allowing the zoox to produce sugars.

It also appears that dosing aminos does not do much harm to your tank as long as your residual N and P levels are not already getting too high.

 

[rossco]

It most certainly can be your nitrates or at least nutrients. A true zero will kill your corals after a while

I used to have the same pale colors especially reds, purples and even my green slimer was pale. I had good growth and bounced back and forth between growth and STN back when I kept my nutrients super low.

You can either get more fish, feed the fish you have more, decrease nutrient export, or dose.

I have a fairly low fish load, 3 medium sized tangs, a handfull of springerii damsels, and a royal gramma, in a 210 gallon. As I am rather attached to the ones I have, am not willing to risk disease by adding more. I used to use my frag tank as a qt, but now the resident fish there are established so I don’t want to introduce anything there either.

Therefore, I dose. Both nitrate and phosphate. Levels must be regularly tested to be successful. I have been skimmerless in my display for over 2 years now, and still need to dose regularly to keep nitrate and phosphate where I want them.

This is from first hand experience. There’s more than one path to success in this hobby.

 

[C. Eymann]

It's not technically bleaching as we relate it to acropora. Bleached typically means lacking pigment and is usually associated with a stressful event. You're just lacking color

Technically bleaching has nothing to do with pigmentation/ chromaprotiens, Bleaching is the expulsion of zooanxthelle.
Acropora can look vibrantly colorful and still be considered bleached.



It most certainly CAN be the very low levels of N/P causing OPs corals' zooanxthelle densities to be low- which is what appears to be what Im looking at.

 

[Ike]

Technically bleaching has nothing to do with pigmentation/ chromaprotiens, Bleaching is the expulsion of zooanxthelle.
Acropora can look vibrantly colorful and still be considered bleached.



It most certainly CAN be the very low levels of N/P causing OPs corals' zooanxthelle densities to be low- which is what appears to be what Im looking at.

Technically it has a lot to do with chlorophyll and dinoflagellate pigments, which has a large impact on coral appearance/coloration. Show me where I said it's not low N or P? My point was that this coral did not expel its zooxanthellae due to stress, so I'm not going to humor you and argue semantics any longer.

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

Update time. One of the pc rainbow frags that I made a while back is starting to get some color to it. Its going from all white to developing an orange green spot on it.

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

Slowly getting nutrients up in the tank color is coming back. My montipora thats been closed for a month is starting to open back up again