I think that might be a little extreme, I've been growing most of these corals for 4+ years and last few months I've gotten better growth and color then ever.

Now, I'm not denying that they may be a little pale/bleached...that being said I do appreciate the input on coral foods.....I've always been taught that SPS's don't need any other then fish poo....and I will be looking into some.

I've never directly fed corals "coral food", only feed the fish and they take care of fertilizing. I did notice loss of vibrance for the period where I was without fish.
I don't think you're in immediate danger of them dying, although I would guess they are in a weakened state and that might have something to do with the tissue loss.

+1

The coral that has tissue loss has only been in my tank for a few days....so I do suspect that it's due to stress from the move to it's new home....this coral is quite brown so I don't believe that it is bleached.

But now that you guys mention it I do noticed that alot of my SPS's are very pail. So I've backed my day lighting off to about 7 hours....but I can't help but wonder if the new bulbs will make a difference them selves in a few weeks...

My old bulbs were only 3 months old but for day light I had
1-6500k Giesseman
1-1000k Current
2-1400k Giesseman

And my new day bulbs

2-ATI 1200k

What promoted me to change out my not so old bulbs was this Article by CoralProps in witch he say's that some of the bulbs I was running had a tendency to brown out some corals and stress others.

http://www.practicalcoralfarming.com/t5spectrums.html

My thought behind this is that I don't want to make to many changes all at once...then if something get's better or worse I won't know exactly what it was to change it.

What do you guys think?

Hey Greg,

Your a T-5 guy are you not? Just wondering.....if this was one of your tanks with an 8 bulb fixture over it....what bulbs and configuration would you run?

The tank is only 20" deep so how about height off the water?

Thanx, appreciate everyone's input here :lol:

I think we have gotten to the point where good skimmers are very affordable...people are trying carbon dosing, gfo etc and I'm seeing many people with the the same symptoms. In fact I've helped quite a few and all of them have improvement after listening to my advise.

Oh I forgot to mention that I'm increasing my feeding as well.....and I am listening don't you worry LOL

So, the other people have had the SPS's pale after starting Bio pellets?.....see I've been unsure as to what has started the change in my corals (changed to many things at once) I started Pellets and upgraded my lights, switched to H20 pro salt, and changed my flow all at the same time :doh:

Yes....people have reported similar results from biopellets. Also you can get bleaching from new bulbs as well....

In the simplest of terms coral lightening/bleaching/paleness is from too much light and/or too little food/nutrients. Coral browning is the opposite....not enough light and/or too much food/nutrients.

Gotta find that sweat spot!

+1...totally agree...Before I feed less to control nutrients, but after I run biopellets, I have to feed more because the cycle is taking out the nutrients much faster from the system.

Ultra low nutrients systems do tend to make coral pastel in color but nowhere near the bleaching you have. Corals are actually very colorfull and saturated in color in a ULN.

I don't see much if any color in your corals. They should very saturated in color.

Look at any zeovit sytem and you will see how they should be in a ULN. IN a system with nitrates and phosphates like mine, they don't have to be brown. Mine are very colorfull, just darker in color and very far from brown, but I do feed them coral food each day.

I have raised my lights up an inch and cut back on day lighting.....any idea how long it will take to see a difference in them?

weeks for slight improvements.....months for a complete turn around. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby.

I would bank on the bio-pellets being the issue....my lights are on from 10am to midmight between the actinics and daylights and you know what my coral looks like.....I think your sps went through nutrient shock not over exposure to light.....

Something that I don't get about this is that I still have all kinds of algae growing in my fuge and I do still have a slight amount of turf algae in my display.

How deep is your display and how high are you lights off the water there Doug?


And to be honest, I didn't think they looked bad......I went from brown SPS's to pale (with color)

I'm going to try and get some better pic's with the white balance set as close to right as I can.

These still aren't perfect......I'm having a hell of a time with how blue my lights are now and getting the camera to show what I'm seeing

But....I know I haven't got the best color....but do they really look bad enough for me to be paranoid about?

http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300053.jpg
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300054.jpg
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300055.jpg

this one looks alot paler do to the glare from the lights

http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300056.jpg

http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300057.jpg
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/q...k/P4300058.jpg

Well....no now that I look all the pic's......the colors are way more vivid in person....maybe I should try again after the day lights turn off

To me they look quite bad but I am used to see corals with loads of colors, here are some of mine. Maybe that's because I am used to dark and very saturated SPS.

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_1228s.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_1082s.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y...103_1099s2.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_0881s.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_0966s.jpg

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_1497s.jpg

Ya, if they were mine, I'd worry about it.

Daniella, your sps corals are looking fabulous with amazing color :shocked!: I can't believe they had been poisoned from Kent carbon before... I highly doubt about it :wink:
Half of mine are still struggling with their color, especially all the blue and purple ones.

The colors of your SPS in your totm 2011 pictures look more like what they should look like.

Thank you everyone for your input, I'll start a new thread for help getting them to color back up, as well as post some pic's along the way :wink:


By the way...the coral that I started the thread about hasn't lost any tissue since I fragged it :biggrin:

[quote=chris121277;711913]How deep is your display and how high are you lights off the water there Doug?[quote]

my display is 20" deep and my lights are 4-5" off the surface

[quote=fishytime;712137][quote=chris121277;711913]How deep is your display and how high are you lights off the water there Doug?
Well....what the heck, mine is 20" as well and I have had mine at about 5-1/2" off the water.

the new thread

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...d=1#post712157

some of these pics were before the poisoning, but they are recovering slowly. The aqua SPS is more green now but it is recovering the blue slowly. All the blue in the coral disapeared with the copper, but it is slowly coming back.

But the purple one was never affected by the copper and look as good today as it did before, strangly. Some SPS bleached completely and died.

The first pic is right before the poisoning and the last pic is the same coral a few weeks ago, like 2 months after the poisoning.

It was the same for me and the blue was most affected and it is the hardest color to get back now. The blue dragon is now all brown.