SPS looking dull

[150 Gallon Reef]

I have a 120 total gallon system tank which has been running for about 6 months. Half the liverock came from my previous system, so it matured pretty quickly. Lately I've noticed some of my sps are losing a bit of color and are not as vibrant as they once were. Nothing is dying, but some SPS don't have full PE. I have not changed my lighting schedule and have very stable conditions. I do not do frequent water changed due to low nutrient level struggles after the WC. I dose brs 2 part with a doser. I was wondering if it is an amino issue since water changes are not done much?

I finished up 5 weeks of vibrant treatment about 3 weeks ago and now just treated chemiclean to take care of a slight cyano issue following vibrant.

Lighting- reefbreeders photon with 2 lumenbars.

Flow- mp40 set to 80 percent wave maker mode. Mp10 set to max wave maker mode flowing across the back of the tank behind rock.

Phosphate- .05 to .08 hanna
Alk- 7.8 to 8.1 red sea
Nitrate- 4 to 8 red sea
Calcium- 460 red sea
Mag- 1300 red sea
Salinity- 1.025 refractometer

I did an icp test about a month ago. I will post the results here. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Dkmoo]

that's a pickle - Ive been dealing with same issues. it's generally some combination lighting/nutrition but its hard to find that sweet spot and they are super sensitive to small changes, is yours browning or bleaching? browning is thought to be due to "high zoox count" but theories for why that is range from too high No3/Po4 to not enough light. Bleaching is too high light, or not the right spectrum light since the color proteins thrive with different spectrums.

lighting - did you change any of the spectrum settings? SPS are sensitive to not only PAR change but also the right spectrum. I've been basically rereading this old article - there are about 4 main flourescent proteins in SPS and they thrive in different spectrums/par so need to make sure the necessary spectrums are all covered.

Aquarium Corals: Making Corals Colorful: New Information on Acropora species

We will look at colors of some of the most popular reef aquarium corals - Acropora species (Family Acroporidae). There is a considerable amount of relatively new information presented in this article.

reefs.com

Nutrition - Vibrant is known to increase nutrient levels b/c it's upcycling No3/po4 from algae back into your bacteria biomass so it's possible that it changed the ratio of how much the coral absorbs via the polyp/catching food vs lighting/photosynthesis, which in turn changed zoox count and the color pigmentation protiens count.


My SPS started browning shortly after vibrant as well but my issue was also lighting (the half of the tank that browned had a first gen AI prime, which was a full 150PAR less than my other half using AI prim HD)

After I upgraded my lighting and zeroed in on the spectrum. i read that "high in high out" for nutrient is better so i started dosing aminos daily (rotation of AB+, acropower, and brightwell) and target feeding food a few times a week. Dialed up filtration too so NO3/Po4 is still at 4ppm/10ppb. so i don't think your levels are low necessarily - it's more about how much the corals absorb, rather than how much is left over and show up on the test kit. Its still too soon for me to really know if it's working, but at least it stopped browning more and it looks like a couple of my acro sticks are colors up more.

EDIT: if you rarely do WC - maybe you are also low in trace elements - i know many of them impact color. For ex - i dose the red sea ABCD since i don't always do WC either and my corals grow very fast (the LPS/Softies, and SPS other than Acros all have great color). only Acros turn dull on me.

 

[gmdcdvm]

"My SPS started browning shortly after vibrant as well but my issue was also lighting (the half of the tank that browned had a first gen AI prime, which was a full 150PAR less than my other half using AI prim HD)

After I upgraded my lighting and zeroed in on the spectrum. i read that "high in high out" for nutrient is better so i started dosing aminos daily (rotation of AB+, acropower, and brightwell) and target feeding food a few times a week. "

Hey,
What AI settings do you use?
Gerry

 

[HB AL]

I have a 120 total gallon system tank which has been running for about 6 months. Half the liverock came from my previous system, so it matured pretty quickly. Lately I've noticed some of my sps are losing a bit of color and are not as vibrant as they once were. Nothing is dying, but some SPS don't have full PE. I have not changed my lighting schedule and have very stable conditions. I do not do frequent water changed due to low nutrient level struggles after the WC. I dose brs 2 part with a doser. I was wondering if it is an amino issue since water changes are not done much?

I finished up 5 weeks of vibrant treatment about 3 weeks ago and now just treated chemiclean to take care of a slight cyano issue following vibrant.

Lighting- reefbreeders photon with 2 lumenbars.

Flow- mp40 set to 80 percent wave maker mode. Mp10 set to max wave maker mode flowing across the back of the tank behind rock.

Phosphate- .05 to .08 hanna
Alk- 7.8 to 8.1 red sea
Nitrate- 4 to 8 red sea
Calcium- 460 red sea
Mag- 1300 red sea
Salinity- 1.025 refractometer

I did an icp test about a month ago. I will post the results here. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Could have been the vibrant and then the chemiclean that upset the sps . Years ago at about the same time frame in my tank had a little algae and cyano and just let it go away on its own and didn't add any chemicals.

 

[Dkmoo]

"My SPS started browning shortly after vibrant as well but my issue was also lighting (the half of the tank that browned had a first gen AI prime, which was a full 150PAR less than my other half using AI prim HD)

After I upgraded my lighting and zeroed in on the spectrum. i read that "high in high out" for nutrient is better so i started dosing aminos daily (rotation of AB+, acropower, and brightwell) and target feeding food a few times a week. "

Hey,
What AI settings do you use?
Gerry

Custom:

used the the AB+ setting from BRS TV as a "base setting"
then added the "teeth" from Saxby's for the peak hours
then from the article above, i noted that the most common "coral spectrums" - UV, Violate, RB, B is mainly targeting the cyan florescent protein. the Cyan/Red/purple, while can still absorb this common spectrum, really peaks with the other spectrums. So, i felt like, for what i have in my tank, the G and R bands from the AB+ settings are too low, so i doubled mine, which actually made it a bit closer to the Pirates of the Caribbean setting. This part tho really depends on what corals you have.

as for intensity i run the full one from the BRSTV one - meaning - 119 UV/Purple 80 RB/B, instead of the 2 finger trick for a lower intensity while maintaining the same spectrum ratio.

i ramp up 2 hrs, max 5 hrs, ramp down to 1/3 2hrs, run 1/3 3 hrs, and run 2%UV/P/RB/B for 12 hrs.

 

[ATAquariums]

Sounds like you need to give you tank some time to breath, stabilize again. I know it will be hard, but don’t start messing with stuff

 

[gmdcdvm]

Custom:

used the the AB+ setting from BRS TV as a "base setting"
then added the "teeth" from Saxby's for the peak hours
then from the article above, i noted that the most common "coral spectrums" - UV, Violate, RB, B is mainly targeting the cyan florescent protein. the Cyan/Red/purple, while can still absorb this common spectrum, really peaks with the other spectrums. So, i felt like, for what i have in my tank, the G and R bands from the AB+ settings are too low, so i doubled mine, which actually made it a bit closer to the Pirates of the Caribbean setting. This part tho really depends on what corals you have.

as for intensity i run the full one from the BRSTV one - meaning - 119 UV/Purple 80 RB/B, instead of the 2 finger trick for a lower intensity while maintaining the same spectrum ratio.

i ramp up 2 hrs, max 5 hrs, ramp down to 1/3 2hrs, run 1/3 3 hrs, and run 2%UV/P/RB/B for 12 hrs.

Any chance you can post a pic of the graph? And thanks for that info. I find it quite helpful.
G

 

[Dkmoo]

Any chance you can post a pic of the graph? And thanks for that info. I find it quite helpful.
G

Funny you asked. So this is the custom one I mentioned. started a couple month ago after my acros browned and upgraded the light.

The acros started coloring up more but progress has been slow and the acclimation mode just finished last week. Today I got the par meter back to check the par again. Although it increases by 100 - 150, it was still below 300 =/. So I has to tweak it again to push it to closer to 400 and the only way to do that was to bring up the other channels. I would not recommend this to anyone else's tank since I'm just experimenting and it's against all the "popular" patterns. I do plan to keep the original setting for my other prime since the rest of my sps/lps on the other half of the tank all look great in it and it was still good enough forb 150 - 250 par on that half. Its only the acro half of the tank that I want to push to 300 to 400. I'll be getting a diffuser too and that'll reduce the par even more. Anyway here's the experimental setting for the acro half that'll push it to 300-400 par that I'll be slowly acclimating for the next month.

o i also have a supplemental reefbrite led strip but it wasn't enough. I know at this point it's probably better to just supplement with T5s or MH but want to at least try this new setting for the acros before buying more stuff.