Dull/brownish SPS colors

[Nami]

Hi R2R team,

I have a few SPS frags that have been growing the past year but they have lost their shine compared to when I purchased them from the store. The frags include cherry bomb, green slimer, digitatas, etc. I have also recently acquired an unknown staghorn (in attached photo).

Specifications:
Tank: Redsea Max Nano XL
Light: Reefled 115 at 90-100% for 10 hours.
KH: ~8.0dkh
Cal:~450ppm
Nitrate: ~0.0
Phosphate:~0.02

Anyone has any idea what is causing these dull colors?

Also if someone can identify the unknown stag in the photo, which I took without any lighting. It seems to be pale blue in color with a lot of polyps.

Cheers!

 

[whalewhalewhale]

my acros look better and grow faster in dirtier water. Feed those fish!

 

[pooootiqe]

Your tank looks perfectly fine imo. Perhaps more akin to the ultra low nutrient systems (ULNS). I run similar lighting to yours (with a tad bit more blue) and a lot of “high end” acros just show up as a brown stick, compared to under blacklights.

Like others said a bit more nutrient will definitely help, especially pulling out the greens and purples, but 50 nitrate and such will likely lead to crazy algae growth under lighting spectrums / conditions like yours.

Some SPS also look a lot better under warmer lighting, like Oregon Tort, milka stylo, pearlberry, and other “old school” stuff!

 

[NeMoo]

For information here are my nutrients numbers for the first year and a half per ICP. I never dose nutrients and would always advise against it. Now moving into year 3 coral growth has limited cleaning because I can’t reach areas to clean detritus so my nutrients are higher: no3 at ~ 1.0 ppm and po4 at ~ 0.1 ppm. This is the nature process of closed systems, they generally get filthier over time.

It’s all good, I’m not a chemist nor have had an icp test, I’ve been using a Hanna ulr phosphorus checker and regularly around.015-.03 if I’m lucky.

Any time I see zero on my phosphorus checker I know Dinos or cyano is not far behind!

Also note the pictures don’t do justice but this acro I picked up that was pretty much all brown has become quite blue and cream colored but looks more green in the pics…. Could be my lights(running a hydra 32 on a 25 lagoon) could be my nutrients I’m not sure. Also note the red monti I almost loss has been coming back quite nicely!

Note the acros on the rack are the same I picked up a couple weeks after the first after seeing that one come around nicely