Chalice question

[ReefCAKE]

I see you all with these crazy chalice colors. I've bought a few frags that were really nice but I can't get them to hold their colors! It's really frustrating. I have micros, acans, favias, tons of z's and p's, sps all with great color, it's just chalices. I run an 8 bulb teak light with usually only 4 on at a time my bulbs are all newer but here is the line up
Aquablue+
actinic+
aquablue+
true actinic
actinic+
Actinic+
aquablue+
actinic+
I run a very small bio-load with only one percula and a gramma in my 75. I spot feed my Lps every third day. I run a pretty large skimmer for my tank. Wate change every third week of 25%. any thought on what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Sikryd]

I would say that you might be running a bit too much blue - lol! Do you have any daylight bulbs in there at all?

You have great SPS color with that bulb combo? Not just in your tank, but when you take them out or sell frags? I've gotten some SPS from guys that run blue tanks/leds and they look awesome and look like they have color, but when I got the frag out of their tank in the sunlight or in mine - it was almost completely bleached looking. I have one frag now, icefire, that has taken 3 months to color up out of a tank like that.

Just my .02

 

[fab1971]

I agree. Too much on the blue side. There are several members here that run a 3-1 or 6-2 ratio and have amazing color. I believe I have 2-3 aqua blues and 1 fiji purple on my tank. It gives it a nice blue look and still delivers a good amount of par. Also, after shipping or fragging a lot of chalices will lose their color. Some of my chalices took over 2-3 months to start coloring up and others need to mature even longer for their potential to be realized.

 

[jerl77]

nice bulb pick there its going to be blue but i love the blue look myself

 

[ReefCAKE]

Not all the bulbs are actually blue, the aquablue+ is A special 60:40 combination of 6000K and 22000K (approx) phosphor blend. And the actinic+ Is similar in color to a 20k bulb maybe a bit more blue. The colors of my frags still look great in other tanks. I'll try and post a full tank shot but with all bulbs running I'd say the color is similar to a 15k halide with actinics.

 

[dakotasreef]

+1 on some taking a while to color up. I have a very similar bulb combo in my powermodule and it took some of my chalices a few months to color up to where they are now.

Good luck