Why do my blue corals always turn green?

[Michael Llabona]

So I have a reef breeder photon v2 and t5 blue plus supplement. I ran 80% blue and 25% white. My Cali tort was mostly green at first. I wanted to increase my par. Over time I increased my whites to almost 50%. My Cali tort started to show a lot more blue. Just my experience.

 

[iTread]

I am going to follow along . I too have a bright green Cali Tort. When I got it about 2 months ago, it was brown, but immediately "greened up". I run Radion XR30 Gen2 Pros. I can't say I use the AB+ as I have modified it quite a bit lately(see image). I finally checked my PAR and it was pretty low. Right now the Cali Tort is getting about 264 Par and 229 (I have two). Maybe I should increase my whites more?

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Blues are best brought out with white light, and most of the time turn to green when stressed from a list of issues. Most blue corals take a good while to come back to being blue after changing color like that too. I agree with the blue led issue too. Also there are not too many truly blue corals around, a lot of them are more purple than blue. I would say the best way to keep good blues is to keep a good spectrum and sea water nutrients.
I don't really like the idea people get when they say jason fox uses all blue light either. He is getting white spectrum from his t5s even though they are blue t5s. Big difference from using just blue led. And Jason picks his corals for certain reasons, because he can sell them and make them look really cool under blue light. I bet he has a long list of corals he stays away from because they don't do well or color up in his tank, most people do really. But if you look at a lot of the guys in europe who use a lot of white light they are keeping corals that are much harder to color and grow with tons of success. In the states not many people have success with them.

 

[SeaDweller]

I have a white Caroliniana (aka raspberry smoothie) that has turned green under heavy blue LEDs (or maybe just brighter light in general). I’m certain it’s the shift from T5 tank into my LED tank that’s made it like that. Seeing if I can get the green gone now.

I have a Cali tort that’s remained blue with blue LED though, but I do run whites for 4 hours in that tank.

 

[Rakie]

I have a white Caroliniana (aka raspberry smoothie) that has turned green under heavy blue LEDs (or maybe just brighter light in general). I’m certain it’s the shift from T5 tank into my LED tank that’s made it like that. Seeing if I can get the green gone now.

I have a Cali tort that’s remained blue with blue LED though, but I do run whites for 4 hours in that tank.

In my experience, it's from a lack of spectrums. WWC runs full spectrum up to 50% whites before the shop opens to the public. Once it opens it's blue only. But that's 4-5 hours of very intense white/green/red lighting per day.

 

[SeaDweller]

In my experience, it's from a lack of spectrums. WWC runs full spectrum up to 50% whites before the shop opens to the public. Once it opens it's blue only. But that's 4-5 hours of very intense white/green/red lighting per day.

Yeah I believe it! This thing was Casper white with red polyps and now it’s fluorescent green. I’m putting it in lower lighting with full spectrum to see if I can reverse that god awful green.

 

[Rakie]

Yeah I believe it! This thing was Casper white with red polyps and now it’s fluorescent green. I’m putting it in lower lighting with full spectrum to see if I can reverse that god awful green.

Well I think high par also helps. I'm a believer in as much par as a coral can take. More par usually brings out more color in *most* sps (not ALL).

 

[Reef and Dive]

Just to add info on this thread, I’m experiencing this green change the same way.

Been abusing blues for months...

I just reduced my blues from 140% (Hydra 64) to 110% and raised my whites from 40 to 60%. I’ll post updates if colors change...

Been fighting some Derbesia latelly but Phos is kept at 0.03 and nitrates around 4.

But this is what happens to my blue colors over time: