Acro/Monti color change

I am trying to determine what is causing the color change in a few of my SPS. The ones I am having a problem with are:

ORA Red Planet Acro- was deep velvet red upon arrival. Within a few days had faded to pale peachy turquoise. Polyp extension is good.

ORA Plum Crazy Acro- was deep plum purple upon arrival. Within a few days had faded to pale turquoise with blue tips. Polpy extension still good.

Also got a few ORA Monti caps and they have done similar. The purple caps are not fading much but the purple rim has gone brown and the pink polyp that was green is also brown. The bird's nests I got with them are doing fantastic. GTO and Hyacinths have held their color and look great.

A couple other notes- A chili pepper Montipora (different source) arrives vivid electric green. Within two weeks it is almost white.

Some brown acropora frags arrived (different source again) with decent color and started bleaching (tips went white) but within a couple weeks all color came back and they are a rich brown color now.

I am trying to figure out if this is a lighting issue or water chemistry. The acros and Montis seem to be the only ones affected.

T- 80
pH- 8.0
Amm- 0
trite- 0
trate- 0
Phos- 0
Calcium- 440
alk- 11

values not listed are not tested for

80g 48 x 24 x 16
1x 400w 20k MH ~ 16" above tank
Flow is heavy and flltration is skimmer/ live rock
I run several bags of GAC and Chemipure Ultra in the sump

To be honest- acros are not really a favorite of mine but I do really like the montipora and would like to grow them well. Any suggestions on what to look at would be greatly appreciated!

 

Did you acclimate the monti and the acorpora to your lighting by keeping them at lower levels in the tank?

Typically I have seen the same changes in color when newly acquired corals were too high in the tank.

RP will fade out at higher lighting levels as will monti.

 

It sounds like you did not light acclimate them properly and the corals have been light shocked.

When using intense lighting, or lighting of a different spectrum, than the corals were under previously, you need to acclimate corals to light intensity, and to a lesser extent photo-period. This can be a slow process, taking weeks or even months, depending on the coral and what type of lighting they are coming from.

here is a write up.
Acclimating Photosynthetic Reef Invertebrates to Captive Lighting

 

Sounds like a nutrient issue to me. I had the same problem with the plum crazy before... It is one of the super hard ones to get rocking good colors.

What size is your skimmer? And what type?
Also, do you run GFO? I doubt your truly reading 0ppm phosphate of your not doing something to control for it. Any algae issues? And last thing i have to say is about your nitrate... Mine always registered as zero but I still thought there was some residual nitrate in my tank that was effecting my colors. Apparently I was right because after I started running a nitrate reactor my tank went from looking really good to standing out as one of the better ones around.

 

They are about 3" off the bottom and on frag crate. The source I got them from had just gotten them from ORA and said they were greenhouse grown. Could my light still be too bright? I also forgot to mention that they have been my system now for a little over a a month with no change in color yet.

Thanks

 

The skimmer is a coralife 125 on the 80. I get about 1/4' of nasty gunk every few days. I have no algae to speak of in the tank. The Chemipure Ultra has worked well for me at pulling out phosphates in other tanks which is why I used it. Wouldn't I have algae if there were phosphate and nitrate?

Thanks

 

I'm sure the spectrum was different. I am surprised that the Seriatoporas are unaffected though.

 

???? Trent? All happened within days of adding to a 16" tall tank, with 400W MHs and no mention of light acclimation. One corals faded and came back, to a brown color. sounds 101% like failure to light acclimate, unless I'm missing something?

 

It's not that the light is too bright, it is that they are not acclimated to the spectral properties of your light. A 20000K bulb is nothing like the sun in terms of spectrum. Also, BTW, ORA uses netting to reduce the intensity, but that isn't the issue IMHO. SPS corals produce pigmentation to protect themselves from light. If the don't have enough pigmentation, to block specific spectrums of light, they can bleach. It really doesn't take much intensity to bleach a coral, that is not adapted to that spectrum. Once light shock has occured, it can take a long time to recover.

 

Yes and no. Nitrate or phosphate is usually the limiting factor for the other in algae growth. Things get messy when you have a sand bed though because the sand will absorb the nutrients and algae won't grow because of that.

I would say that your skimmer is ok for just a softie and lps tank, but too underpowered for a tank with mostly sps that look amazing. It won't pull the junk out efficiently enough.
For comparison, I use an ETSS 600 on my 150 total gallon system and I pull out 2.5 gallons of the blackest stinkiest thickest liquid you can imagine every 1-2 weeks.