That's a good idea playing with placement. I've been doing the same thing. I have a red planet in 3 different places and all three look different! One is more red one is more pink and one is more green. I also have a bonsai in two different places and one is more blue in its tips while one is more purple. It's kinda cool to observe the differences.
Personally I think your pale/pastel colours are due to your ULNS environment. You don't have a lot of fish in there at all. It depends on your perspective whether or not this is a good or bad thing tho. Many people strive for that pastelly zeoVit look. I think this is why zeoVit has all those other bottles to play with. You strip your tank clean with the zeoLites and pale your corals out, but then bring back some colour (possibly selectively) by dosing the various additives (Coral Vitalizer, pohls xtra, amino acids, etc..). Then there are people like me who would see this as an excuse to add more fish.
