pale colours sps
 

Wicked weather here in Whistler.Anyways, I recently got back into sps and bought a bunch of frags. They all started off beautiful but have lost the intense color. I dialed my illumina down to 40%. My alk is at 9, ca is 500. No detectable phosphates or nitrates. dosing a splash of mb7 everynight and started 5 drops of amino acid . reef is a 93g cube. 250 ml of biopellets. Thoughts? cheers

Would drop alk a little, and Ca a lot.

Really? and that would affect the colors?

possibly, perhaps as a secondary factor. Ca never needs to be anywhere near 500.
If they've just moved into new lighting, that could do it. If they were in substantially less light, mild bleaching over a couple of weeks could result.

Different water as well. Not good or bad, but just significantly different
could throw them off for a while

Thanks Brad, I guess patience will work. I have good PE so not overly worried.
Hope to see you at Richs for the swap!!!!

Yeah +1 what brad said.

And just wait a couple weeks. Fresh cut frags seem to loose color IMO. And lighting and water from other tank.

Some pieces could take a month to color up. My red planet went yellow after tank transfer. Grows like a weed but still waiting to regain its glory and its been 4 months

I am not sure why you would dial down your lighitng, especially LED. I have found that SPS coloration improves with specifically more UV light, I doubled the UV LED's in my tank, and color improvment is significant.

If we were talking about LPS like chaliace then yeah put it low, but SPS, specifically Acropora or Milli, need intense light.

If they came from a tank with dual T5 and went under a LED at 90%, they'd bake in about 3 days :) Dialing down to match the source lighting is a good idea. Then slowly ramp up

They came from a tank with dual 250 mh, and one with 6 T5's