SPS coloration?

I'm no SPS guru and have lost more than I keep in past months. I do have a few frags that have withstood the test of time and all changes in my tank up til this point however. Some even flourishing.

My question is: What's the main contributing factor to determine coral color? Is it mostly lighting? Water parameters? Both?

I don't have a single SPS coral that looks the same in my tank as when I bought it from my LFS. My LFS has 20K MH's...I have a mixture of LED. Some of these Frags have grown significantly, an indication that their healthy, but for the most part the colors just seem dull in my tank.

My green tort for example. When Purchased it was a single 2" stalk on a frag plug with a beautiful deep dark green hue. Now it's about twice that size in overall diameter spread with new branches and encrusting rockwork, but the color is null. It has green highlights on all portions of the coral exposed to the most light but it overall lacks the deep green color apparent when I first purchased it.

Open to all experiences

 

Phosphates are the enemy to vibrancy. What LED's are you using as well? This could be a factor, but excess po4 and no4 are the primary culprits, especially if you are lose corals.

An in depth look at sps you can find how how trace element effect acro colors, but with green acro its going to be excess PO4 giving you a lackluster brown.

 

My guess would be lighting , I've yet to see any vibrant sps under LEDs.

 

I have seen plenty of gorgeous tanks with LED lighting. I believe there is a thread on here somewhere with people showing off their own reefs with LED only lighting.
Disclaimer: I do not have LED's.

I would definitely check Phosphates and nitrates as well as this is usually the cause (what I have seen from others, at least). Do you have any excess algae growing as this would be a sign?

Also, on the entire other end of the spectrum, I have seen "too little" nutrients cause dull coloring (this happened to my tank personally). My tank was running 0 nitrates and 0.00 ppm phosphates on a hanna checker and I was running my T5 lights for 12 hours. What worked for me, in this particular case was to feed more, including feeding my SPS corals, and reducing light to 8 hours total. I also started dosing Elos Amino Acids. My corals colored up very nicely after that. Oh, my phosphates are now around 0.02 and nitrates are still 0 (salifert).
As a matter of fact, my tank NEVER had a diatom bloom, even during cycling!

 

ive got pretty vibrant colors.

 

I should have clarified that I haven't personally seen any vibrant sps under LEDs , I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

 

<-- offended to a high degree! I agree with you though. Until recently most leds were based off Royal blue and cool white which gives a limited spectrum not idea for certain zooxanthellae. With the right leds you can have a color spectrum that matches high quality MH IMO

 

That was sarcasm in case it doesnt come across well....... not really offended

 

I got it , glad your not offended. I don't want to hijack this thread but i agree that some led's lack certain spectrums.

 

Its not hijacking, might well be the cause of his coloration problems!