I'll try to get some pictures which will help as it is not just that they are all turning brown. Some have turned a bit brown, others have never coloured up and stayed a bit brown as they were when I got them and others are just faded (my red mille is more a peach/pale pink colour then the more intense red it was originally). Some have coloured up at the tips but the rest has stayed brown.
While I certainly want advice and opinions I am also trying to make sense of what is being said. I seriously doubt it is a low light issue with an 8 x 54 watt T5 fixture. High nutrients could be a cause but I'm not sure it fits with the overall picture. Zoas tend to like higher nutrient tanks but they are not doing particularly well either. Excessively high nutrients would show up with the test kits. The reason the test kits are seen to be inaccurate at low levels is because our eyes cannot pick out the very slight colour changes at the low levels, not to mention variations in the colour temperature and intensity of the ambient light people are testing under. You would need a sensitive colourimeter for real accurate results. The kits are fairly accurate but our eyes are not. So my levels are testing at zero or near enough I can't see a colour change. I do not have any algae blooms only cheato growing in my sump. If the cheato is sucking up nutrients such that they are immeasurable then the levels in the water are low. It is possible the coral are also sucking up some of the nutrients too and that is partly responsible for the lack of colour but I'm not feeding a ton with only 3 small fish. I tend to put the food in a little at a time with a pipette and only add a bit more when they have eaten what's floating around. The two cleaner shrimp, snails and hermit crabs hurry to snatch up what's left and the serpent star is out scavenging at night.
Sure the coralife skimmer isn't the best but it was a freebie as part of a package deal with other equipment and it is skimming a nice dark skimmate so it is taking stuff out of the water. A new skimmer isn't in the budget right now.
I do suspect my Alk may have been a bit unstable so I am keeping an eye on that right now. That may also have been the source of or contributed to the problem. But my reading does indicate that corals can fade and go brown from lack of feeding too as it looks like they need something like 20% of their nitrogen in the form of protein/amino acids. That's why I'm asking about feeding regimens for corals that work for others as I rarely feed anything for them.
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