How to Avoid Greening?

[Biokabe]

Question is the title. I'm able to keep acros alive and growing. However, when I bring them into my tank, whatever colors they had from their original system begin to fade and they tend to green out - not completely, but the colors I originally like on them tend to fade out.

Tank is a 90g (48 x 18 x 24). Lighting is three Radeon XR15 (two G4, one G5 Blue), along with 4 T5 bulbs (Two ATI blue plus, one ATI Coral Plus, and I think the last is an Aquablue Special... but don't hold me to that). Tested PAR is around 200 at the sand bed, around 350 at the top of the rockwork. Overall spectrum is somewhere around 14k - not the full 20k blue, but definitely blueshifted compared to a daylight spectrum.

Flow is about 60-80x tank volume, delivered through 4 programmable powerheads.

I'm not currently running a protein skimmer, but I am running both a refugium and an ATS. When last measured, nitrates were 1.5 ppm, phosphates at .2 ppm. Alkalinity runs between 8.3-8.6 depending on time of day, Ca at 420 or so, and Mg at 1250.

I dose 8 ml of NeoNitro and 10 ml of AFR each day. I don't feed the acros directly, but my mix of food (broadcast to the tank through my Plank) includes Benepets Benereef powder, Aquaforest Zoa Food, freeze-dried rotifers, freeze-dried calanus, and freeze-dried cyclops. I assume the acros are taking those up.

I am planning on replacing the T5 bulbs with one or two Quanta Helix bars in the near future, so in addition to any husbandry changes I wouldn't mind advice on the best spectrum of those to pick up.

 

[X-37B]

Question is the title. I'm able to keep acros alive and growing. However, when I bring them into my tank, whatever colors they had from their original system begin to fade and they tend to green out - not completely, but the colors I originally like on them tend to fade out.

Tank is a 90g (48 x 18 x 24). Lighting is three Radeon XR15 (two G4, one G5 Blue), along with 4 T5 bulbs (Two ATI blue plus, one ATI Coral Plus, and I think the last is an Aquablue Special... but don't hold me to that). Tested PAR is around 200 at the sand bed, around 350 at the top of the rockwork. Overall spectrum is somewhere around 14k - not the full 20k blue, but definitely blueshifted compared to a daylight spectrum.

Flow is about 60-80x tank volume, delivered through 4 programmable powerheads.

I'm not currently running a protein skimmer, but I am running both a refugium and an ATS. When last measured, nitrates were 1.5 ppm, phosphates at .2 ppm. Alkalinity runs between 8.3-8.6 depending on time of day, Ca at 420 or so, and Mg at 1250.

I dose 8 ml of NeoNitro and 10 ml of AFR each day. I don't feed the acros directly, but my mix of food (broadcast to the tank through my Plank) includes Benepets Benereef powder, Aquaforest Zoa Food, freeze-dried rotifers, freeze-dried calanus, and freeze-dried cyclops. I assume the acros are taking those up.

I am planning on replacing the T5 bulbs with one or two Quanta Helix bars in the near future, so in addition to any husbandry changes I wouldn't mind advice on the best spectrum of those to pick up.

For bars take a look at the or4 uv/v bars. I run 3 over my 150.
They brighten the system and give good color across many corals.
I run them at 100% for 5-6 hrs a day.

 

[BryanM]

My understanding is certain trace elements tend to be responsible for coloration.

Iodine, manganese, iron, potassium are, I believe, the common ones.

You might do an ICP test and see where you're at with these, even though you are dosing AFR. I was dosing AFR as well, and I was low in all 4 of these.

 

[Biokabe]

My understanding is certain trace elements tend to be responsible for coloration.

Iodine, manganese, iron, potassium are, I believe, the common ones.

You might do an ICP test and see where you're at with these, even though you are dosing AFR. I was dosing AFR as well, and I was low in all 4 of these.

I have an ICP out for analysis right now, should have the results in a couple of days.

 

[Biokabe]

For bars take a look at the or4 uv/v bars. I run 3 over my 150.
They brighten the system and give good color across many corals.
I run them at 100% for 5-6 hrs a day.

How long have you had those OR4 bars? I've read multiple reports of them burning out just after warranty expires. They are on my short list of LED bars, but I've been a little leery of the reports of burnout.

 

[NeutronMan]

A lot of my green corals started getting color when I just resorted to blasting them with light (500-600 par). I’ve seen plenty of others not running anywhere near this level with good color so I’m probably compensating for some other limiting factor.

 

[CHSUB]

Super intense light and low nutrients.

 

[painter1982]

Super intense light and low nutrients.

How do you avoid bleaching?

 

[CHSUB]

How do you avoid bleaching?

I feed corals directly and it seems to work. Coral color is extremely difficult to optimize and understand imo. I noticed coral color changes on corals in lower light more dramatically. One coral specifically I purchased as a bright yellow specimen, the lower light piece has turned green while the piece right under my lights has maintained some yellow color.
I’m not under any delusion that I have a great amount of control with color; but high intensity lighting, low nutrients and direct targeted feeding seems to be the most effective.

 

[Red_Beard]

I feed corals directly and it seems to work. Coral color is extremely difficult to optimize and understand imo. I noticed coral color changes on corals in lower light more dramatically. One coral specifically I purchased as a bright yellow specimen, the lower light piece has turned green while the piece right under my lights has maintained some yellow color.
I’m not under any delusion that I have a great amount of control with color; but high intensity lighting, low nutrients and direct targeted feeding seems to be the most effective.

Seconded

 

[Science/G]

Measure your par , replace your old T5s, lower P04 to .1 or just below, increase your nitrates. Pay attention to Potassium and Iodine when you get your ICP results. Just my 2 cents.

 

[NeutronMan]

How do you avoid bleaching?

You’ll want to raise par slowly over time.

 

[Reefer Matt]

Balanced lighting and flow. Also, some nitrate helps. My sps tanks run about 20ppm nitrate and .05ppm Phosphate.

 

[X-37B]

How long have you had those OR4 bars? I've read multiple reports of them burning out just after warranty expires. They are on my short list of LED bars, but I've been a little leery of the reports of burnout.

Almost 2 years with no issues.
I ran or3's in my old 120 no issues

 

[Science/G]

I have observed, over years of reef keeping, that there really are sweet spots for corals. Lighting intensity, flow, nitrates, phosphates, and trace elements all play a part. With lighting in particular, I have noticed that some of my acros, when they got too much light, lost their Multicolor (rainbow) look and just ended up a drab single color, while others that needed more light, ended up with a drab color as well. Make/ record your observations and try to find the sweet spot.

 

[AlexandraDreadlocksPanda]

How long have you had those OR4 bars? I've read multiple reports of them burning out just after warranty expires. They are on my short list of LED bars, but I've been a little leery of the reports of burnout.

I’ve been running Orphek bars for many years now, about 3/4 of them I bought secondhand. About once every 6-9 months I’ll get a diode pop (usually a UV one). Takes me about an hour to take bar down, open up, test which diode has failed, desolder & knock off, add thermal paste & solder new diode, reassemble and put back up. Bags of LED chips work out at pennies each.

 

[Biff0rz]

What did the ICP say? Too much iron can cause them to green too.

 

[Biokabe]

This is what the ICP said.

TL;DR version: Salinity was actually running a big low (need to recalibrate my refractometer, apparently). Nitrates were low, phosphates were high (which I already knew). Mo, Mn, Fe were all low, as were vanadium and zinc (though how much those two matter, I don't know).

 

[Biff0rz]

This is what the ICP said.

TL;DR version: Salinity was actually running a big low (need to recalibrate my refractometer, apparently). Nitrates were low, phosphates were high (which I already knew). Mo, Mn, Fe were all low, as were vanadium and zinc (though how much those two matter, I don't know).

No3 is far to low. Po4 is pretty high. My bet is the po4 is causing them to green. How old is the tank?

Also, aluminum is not crazy but it could be an issue soon. Do you know what's causing your aluminum to be as high as it is? Do you use biomedia like bio balls or blocks?

 

[Biokabe]

No3 is far to low. Po4 is pretty high. My bet is the po4 is causing them to green. How old is the tank?

Also, aluminum is not crazy but it could be an issue soon. Do you know what's causing your aluminum to be as high as it is? Do you use biomedia like bio balls or blocks?

"How old is the tank?" is a somewhat more complicated question than you would think on the face of it.

The most literal answer is 5 months. That's not really the correct answer, though, because that's literally just how old the tank itself is. The system - the rocks, sump, etc - has been running since at least 2020. And a good chunk of the filtration in the tank - the rocks, especially - have been under continual use since 2016.

I've been dosing NO3 for about 6 weeks now, started shortly before I took that ICP sample, and it's now up to 12 ppm or so. PO4 is still about where it was at the ICP sample. I need to switch from lanthanum to something more long-term... I used the lanthanum to try and flush out all the excess phosphates on my rocks from 10 years of abuse, and I think it worked. After staying stubbornly high for a long time, I now see actual weekly fluctuation in phos numbers. Based on that, it looks like my system is producing about 0.2 ppm of phosphate per week.

As for the aluminum - I do have ceramic MarinePure spheres in the sump. They've been there since 2016, and I have had Al levels similar . Unless there's aluminum in the foods I feed, that would be about the only source for it that I can think of. That level has been pretty consistent for the entire lifetime of the tank, though I haven't done a ton of ICP testing. Going back to 2016, Al has always been somewhere between 20 ppb and 50 ppb.