Interesting Acro question

[marie]

In my recent troubles I had a very nice yellow/green acro start to bleach out

This is what it looked like a few months ago


In the last couple of weeks the coral started to regain colour but definitely not the colour it was before. You can see a white branch in the back ground so it isn't a reflection of the lights... this coral is turning purple



Has anyone ever had such a drastic colour change before?

Oh and the tissue is still there so it isn't some kind of funky algae

[Aquattro]

Yes, I've seen corals come in one color, go brown or bleach for a while, then come back in a different color. Not always a color you want, but this time you got lucky

[marie]

Well if it keeps the new colour it will be a show stopper of a coral.


Almost makes me want to force the rest of my corals to bleach

JK...maybe

[niloc16]

marie i would definitely get it out of your system right away. send it down here to me and i'll see what i can do with it, ok

[Snappy]

Hopefully the purple zoaxanthelae in that piece will continue to stay dominant for you. Acro's can often be predictabley unpredictable.

[marie]

Originally Posted by Snappy

Hopefully the purple zoaxanthelae in that piece will continue to stay dominant for you. Acro's can often be predictabley unpredictable.

Just for the record there is no purple zooanthellae. All zooanthellae are varying shades of gold/brown, it's the coral pigment itself that gives you different colours.

[Snappy]

Originally Posted by marie

Just for the record there is no purple zooanthellae. All zooanthellae are varying shades of gold/brown, it's the coral pigment itself that gives you different colours.

Where does the coral get it's pigment from after bleaching? There is said to be 3 varieties of zoaxanthelea and each is affected by different spectrums. We are obviously reading different studies.

[marie]

Originally Posted by Snappy

Where does the coral get it's pigment from after bleaching? There is said to be 3 varieties of zoaxanthelea and each is affected by different spectrums. We are obviously reading different studies.

Hmm, I read somewhere that there are more then 3, anyway here is wikipedias definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooxanthellae

http://www.uvi.edu/coral.reefer/zooxanth.htm

Unfortunately I lost most of the websites that I had bookmarked when my computer crashed last year. I had a fair bit of info saved from Eric Borneman.

I believe the colour is produced by the coral to control the amount of light getting to the zooxanthella.

When bleaching occurs there is no zooxanthella to protect so the pigment is lost and in low light conditions (or high nutrients) when a coral turns brown, what you are actually seeing is the colour of the zooxanthella itself trying to absorb as much light as possible.

The pastel corals that you see in some pics of zeovit tanks are actually partially bleached corals. The tank is so nutrient poor that it is having problems feeding the zooxanthella


*edit* I realize the whole zooxanthellae/coral colouring thing is a lot more complex then i have said, but i hate typing so I kept it as short as I could

[marie]

And here is another link (it's steven pros rant of the month way back in june /06 )

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic37...=zooxanthellae

[mark]

Similiar.

Started as a single digit of purple which I promptly lost. Found a couple of months later upside down in a crack. Was completely white but still looked like some tissue, so left it in the tank. Turned brown/green and started branching and a couple of months ago tips started turning blue.