montipora losing color

ive had a monti for about 3 weeks. its a 5" frag. it has started to lose its color in the last few days. it was red now its turning pink. all i can think of is my nitrates might be causing this. theyre at 15ppm. im doing water changes to lower it.

 

what lights do you have?
and what do you have for flow?
whats your alk level?

 

^ yeah, need more info. Nitrate will generally cause it to get darker, not lighter. Also, what do you have for filtration. Are you running GFO?

 

no i dont run gfo my phosphates are at .2
4 bulb t5 it a 40 breeder tank
i dont have much flow waiting on my shipment of powerheads
i dont know what my alk levels are

 

high alk can cause light colors, .2ppm are a bit high but not bad... if anything it will be going darker (unless it came from a system that had high phosphates. then the move to lover phosphates will lighten up the coral and it will eventually return then).
if its getting very low flow it will lighten up but will get darker if flow increases. monti caps really dont need too terribly much flow though

 

Often they will turn pink under metal halide lights. I see you have t5s Are they fresh and is the coral very close to them? If it is pink due to high light, this isn't a problem. Caps love light.

 

its about 8" from the light and yes theyre new bulbs. im using 2 power glo (18k) and 2 marine glo bulbs

 

you may already be using a 2 part cal and alk if not you may want to try it, years ago all my caps and monti's were turning pale, i ckecked everything, nothing seemed to be wrong, i went to the lfs and seen the 2 part and got it 2 or 3 day's after using it all my corals started comming around and i've been using it ever since. and 8" may be a bit close i hope they come around for you.

 

i use reef salt. i was told i dont need to dose.
the tank 18" deep i cant get it much farther away from the light.

 

8" from the lights might do it. They do not require tons of light. High phosphate sometimes seems to cause lightening although this is somewhat counterintuitive and I don't understand the mechanism. Your phosphate is really high though. If you prefer darker, I'd probably run some GFO and move it lower, see what happens and go from there. Even if you like the light color you may want to run some GFO, phosphate levelsthat high are asking for algae problems; definitely don't dose anything.


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