Are my sps Pale?

[bobssecrtsn]

Well after reading up on ULN tanks and what not i wanted to know from other people if you guys think my tank has pale sps,


I myself think that i have brown sps, im not sure what it is and how to fix it


50g Cube 20-30 lbs Live rocks has been setup for 3-4 months(recently moved Dec 1. and everything settled down )
2x 1.1 ml BRS dosers ( 49ml ca daily ) (44 ml alk daily ) w/ ESV 2part
BAC 7 skimmer
250w MH radium bulbs driven by Vue Tech HID E-ballast 7hrs 1-8:30pm
Refuge reverse daylight schedule (trim cheato every 2.5 weeks)
2x TLF reactors - 1) 9 spoons of BRS GFO/ 2)10-16 oz of carbon - both changed monthly
CA-440
ALK-7.8
MG- 1300-1400
po4- 0 with hanna 713
no3-0 RedseaPro
pH - 7.9-8.18 daily
Temp. 77.9- 78.5
I have not had any issues with any swings at all the past month and kept my param. steady,


Dosing Schedule
Daily - Brightwell Coral Amino, FlatwormStop(precaution), Vodka .2ml
Every other day - a mixture of phyto fest and mysis, garlic, reefchilli


i do not have any pest, Besides Red Planaria ( i only found 1 last week will be treating my tank this coming sunday)

this photo was taken on 12-7-12

and this was 11-3-12 before the move

Sorry for the crappy photos i will take some better ones later

 

[oowtfmang]

I think your tank looks fine. Might wanna take it easy on the amino acids. Give it time; they'll color up.

 

[bobssecrtsn]

My corals looks so dull and not vibrant... Need to fix this! Family members stats that they only see a pile of rocks....

 

[Reefs-A-Lot]

my wife said the same thing, time will be the only fix. it took mine around 3 months to reach there full color in my tank with stable params. some corals take longer, also pending your lighting if they came from a T5 setup in the store to your bright 250MH then they may go through a bleaching process and then recover if this happen wait 5+ months pending some corals take longer. beauty cant be rushed in this hobby/addiction every thing good takes time.

one thing to mention as well, i got mostly browns in my tank or at least what i thought, but under my new AI Vega's they have now reached a whole new color range, lighting can change the color drastically, for example i bought a tri color acro when i placed it in my tank under my MH it was just brown with green polyps, but under the LEDS color goes back to the tri color.

 

[Chameleon]

You could always try some Royal Blue LED supplements for bringing out some colors past the halides ability, but I think your corals look good. If you think they are pale you can always bump up the nutrients and see what happens. I tried ULNS and since have reverted back to what had worked before preferring the tanks hardiness in the latter method. ULN is a tightrope.

 

[KoleTang]

It is normal for acros to get a bit browned out during a move or some other kind of stress.

Supplemental lighting could help also. Ie., LED strips, VHO actinic, etc.

 

[Reef Pets]

Of course there are several things hat can effect the colors of sps. From looking at your discription it could simple be the move. If it were me I would lower the amino dosing, stop vodka dosing (slowly) and stop the flatworm meds and no need to feed SPS daily. I would change the light schedule to be a minimum of 8 hours per day. Of course you will get many different opinions because some of these situations are very hard to tell what might be effecting your coral. I'm just giving advise on what I would personally do.

 

[bobssecrtsn]

Of course there are several things hat can effect the colors of sps. From looking at your discription it could simple be the move. If it were me I would lower the amino dosing, stop vodka dosing (slowly) and stop the flatworm meds and no need to feed SPS daily. I would change the light schedule to be a minimum of 8 hours per day. Of course you will get many different opinions because some of these situations are very hard to tell what might be effecting your coral. I'm just giving advise on what I would personally do.

you are correct, alot of people were telling me it was the move, but i think i will stop feeding AA first for 2 weeks then vodka..

 

[Dowtish]

Plain and simple. You have so many small frags in there, that it's going to take time for the tank to settle in. Color will come, it just takes a little time. Some are going to start encrusting, and some will start branching, and some won't do a thing. Then all of the sudden those that havent done anything will explode. I am a firm believer that you can starve your corals with ULN's, so I try to keep my phosphates at 0.03, and not any lower. I feed heavy, I do water changes, and I only dose aminos once a month.

 

[robby2782]

Your GFO could possibly be a problem too if your also dosing vodka. You may may look into possibly taking that offline and letting your nutrients go up a little like the Dowtish stated. Just keep a close eye on your your phosphates if you do so.

 

[bobssecrtsn]

I will. i just got suppliment lighting, 2x panorama Pro 453 actinics and they make the corals POP when the MH are off and makes the tank look a bit bluer then normal but with that said it looks like my corals are doing MUCH better!

I also cut back my lighting from 1- 7 MH and my Suppliment 11-9

 

[Zack]

Good to hear things are coloring up for you. I was also thinking it may have been not enough nutrients. Did you end up allowing your phosphates to go up a bit? Once I started letting my tank run with a small amount of phosphates the color seems to be improving. 0 wasn't the magic number for me anyways.

Sent from my VS950 4G using Forum Runner

 

[bobssecrtsn]

i believe i just had to add suppliments, i really dont think MH alone can make a coral POP with just 16k lighting for 7hours a day which might be to much light. and i also switched to rods food and started with that

 

[sleeri]

For me, good color came after I changed from T5 to MH (14k - 250W), started spreading out my 2 part dosing (morning & evening), began dosing zeovit AA, installed a controller ... and finally managed to be patient my tank! This was over the course of 2+ years. I couldn't tell you which is most important (probably the last though, ha). Just kept tweaking things and observing and tweaking some more. I'm still looking for even better color, so the process continues! Good luck!

 

[ddpham]

Can you please update? I m in the same situation.

 

[bobssecrtsn]

So far everything is doing better more polyp extension and the growth has been taking off, I just dosed the tank with salifert flatworm exit because I saw 2 . After 3x dosing only saw 3 dead. And also weird thing is the p.e on my acros went berserk! It was the longest I've seen it. But time will tell