frustrated with colour...

[kwirky]

Ok, I've been having problems retaining deep rich colours in some of my LPS corals and an SPS colony I recently aquired too. Growth is no problem but colours are a pain...

I bought this at Gold's almost 4 weeks ago. Dennis said it was montipora. I think it's a type of montipora digitata. Didn't know if it was aquacultured, or if they just fragged up a colony they recieved. Was a 3" frag.



It looked like this 3 days later and hasn't changed since:


I think I bleached it. Dennis said to put it at the top of my tank and not to bother screening it with window screen... I think that bleached it. It's grown pretty good though since I've gotten it... The areas with the newest growth have green polyps but the skeleton is still the fleshy pink colour.

I do notice little dark spots that have multiplied on it and no polyps grow around these. Could it be an infection, or just retracted polyps? This was my first sps piece.

And I also have a favia frag that at the LFS had nice deep green polyps with a green fringe around each polyp. Now it's completely brown and only shows the deep colouring in new growth that's in any sort of a shaded spot. still haven't gotten it's original colour and it's almost 3 months later.

It's a 120g 48x24x24 system with an 8 bulb teklight T5 light. undetectable nitrates for at least the past 3 months (salifert kit). constant skimming from a euroreef, and I actively run carbon that's changed at least every 3 weeks. phosban reactor with rowaphos.

I do have some large (6"+) chunks of sarcophyton. I'm in the process of getting rid of some of them. But the favia frag browned out before I got the sarcophyton.

I'm at a loss. I've changed my T5 bulb combinations to no avail, I've been up on my testing and I maintain 420ppm calcium and 8 dkh alkalinity (using 2 part). It's getting kinda annoying because it feels as though i'm missing SOMETHING.