"SPS turning Green"

marreef · Nov 2, 2009

well hey guys whats up im new here so i thought i would start my first post with a problem i have which is some of my blue tenius and purple acroporas are turning green on there growth tips which is a little unusual considering all my water parameters are perfectly fine, i was thinking maybe it was a problem with my lighting but i have 2x150watt mh radium 20k and 2x96watt t5 for a 55 gallon i think its more than enough. what do you guys think.here's my water parameters.need help:squigglemouth:

salt 1.024
mag 1350
cal 420
alk 8dkh
po4 .3ppm
no3 undectable
temp 78-81

ddiver · Nov 2, 2009

My blues and and purples usually go thru a green phase before turning solid blue/purple...

marreef · Nov 2, 2009

I would guess that it would happen to maybe one or two at a time but not all of them were talking about 3 or 4 colonys thats just a little to weird

killingseed2000 · Nov 2, 2009

do you have or can you take a picture and post it.

Paul_N · Nov 2, 2009

Is the phosphate reading .3 or .03? It should be .03.

ddiver · Nov 2, 2009

Oops edited..

marreef · Nov 2, 2009

yeah i can post some pics tonight and yes .03 is the the correct po4 reading sorry for the typo

pwoller · Nov 2, 2009

Did you change your lighting recently?

marreef · Nov 3, 2009

no i haven't, i've had the same lighting for about a year now

50hexman · Nov 3, 2009

What are you dosing marreef ?

jam3s · Nov 3, 2009

you might consider changing your bulb. A year is long time for some bulbs esp. if you running them with HQI's.

Brshriver · Nov 3, 2009

I have seen that too at times - but at the base not the tips. Blue torts with a lot of green at the base. A tri-color with more green than purple. It seems like a change in bulbs affects it. My frag tank corals don't show it right now but the main tank does and they share water. Lighting and flow are the only differences.

holyscoly · Nov 4, 2009

also higher iodine levels can cause this to like overdosing on lugols or iodine sup.

Brshriver · Nov 4, 2009

Interesting. I do dose seachems vitamin supplement sometimes which contains iodine. I bet that is part of it.

Ike · Nov 7, 2009

I would imagine it's because of the lower par bulbs combined with them being older. I've got an old Phoenix bulb on my frag tank and it will turn Acroporas green in the same exact water as my display tank.

THEMADREEFER · Nov 9, 2009

I would agree with low par being the culprit. I had 150w ab bulbs and went to 20k radiums and aproximately six months into the new bulb I had a similar problem.