stupid question
 

why is it when i go to the local fish store to look at corals and stuff, alot of the corals seem lack color. And when I look at other peoples reef tanks the colors seem to be very intense ?

Often the better corals have already been picked through and sometimes it's because home aquaria have better lighting

Everytime I go to vancouver it always seems like i'm there between shipments and the only corals left are brown. I took a chance on a brown acropora once that was on sale for half price and ended up with this

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat.../may17_006.jpg

Unfortunately the other brown acropora I got remained brown :lol:

Alot of store tanks don't have the best of water quality. They will usually try to do things as cost effective as possible. Where most aquarist will try to stay up on there water quality .Having good water quality and better lighting and flow and posibly better filtering units then what stores use. This alows aquarist to turn those brown corals into gems.

I think sometimes you just need to take a chance. I bought a decent sized brown acro just the other week becuase you could see a hint up purple at the tips. Now in my system the purple is spreading down the branches, it will be a really nice coral when it colours up :)

ya i'm with jkhchris, they do try to often go cost effective as possible alot of times, when i got my cup coral colony a couple months ago, it was a dull brown under there lights and i really just got it for it's sheer size, but when i got him settled up high in my tank he turned an intense fluorescent green, wierd color change, by far the most intensely colored hard coral in my tank. Then again they were running 10k's, so the true color wasn't exactly shown. good question though i always wondered that too..

Like Greg says...if you look really closely you can get an indication of what colour a coral might go.

In most cases it is all to do with lighting. Metal Halides give the best color, I haven't seen any LFS using that, it costs too much for them.

I'd have to say most coral sellers I've visited do use MH lighting.

I would say that too. Can't recall any LFS around the lowermainland that don't use metal halide lighting.

yeah, regular pet stoores rarely do but I think many of the SW specialty places do, depends on where you go

Guess it depends on the level of care the store wishes to provide. One store here in Calgary is even running a solaris led on one of their tanks. A few here run a mix of lighting depending on the coral in the tank, halides for the sps tanks and T5s or VHO florescent for the lps and softie tanks.

NOT a stupid question at all.

When I was in HK, the SW stores generally had much brighter coloured corals & clams than here in Vancouver.

The standard clam over there would be on sale as 'ultra' grade over here for example.

When I lived in the UK, there would generally be 75% brown-ish or duller coloured corals & the rest would be more expensive more nicely coloured stuff.

Same in France, Spain & Germany - usually some nicely coloured pieces amongst the brown.

Here in Vancouver, most of the corals & clams do seem duller. In 7 yrs or so of reefing & having visited LFS's in many countries, I've never seen such a number of dull coloured corals in LFS's.

I don't know if its because of the distance they have traveled, or the store's water quality or their equipment or whatever...

I just see so many dull coloured corals in the sales tanks & the only coloured up pieces in their display tanks.

It gives me the impression that the good stuff never actually goes on sale to general public but to 'preferred' customers or to LFS staff.

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