My acro is turning brown, Help!

[lemonheadmech]

Okay well I'm having a problem with my acro turning brown. Dont know why, if anyone knows what could be happening that would be great.

This is what it looked like before...


This color of the bottom right frag is what it looked like before I had to frag that colony.


The color change happened at about the two month mark. I would like to be able to fix this before the rest of my frags in the tank start to loose there nice colors and tan out.

Some tank specs: 90aga bb; NH3, No2, No3 are at undetectable levels; ph is about 8.0 to 8.1; Po4 is nothing; dkh is at 9 and calcium is as about 390 to 400; sg is 1.025. I try to keep everything stable, do 15gal water chainges with rodi water and reef crystals every other week. This is the second week of dt's and nothing there either. Running 2 250watt aqualine hqi's in 10k and 2 t-5 ho actinics.

Thanks for reeding this.

[Hendersonracing]

from my little knowledge its from to high of phosphates that typically turns acros brown? also I know light has something to do with it also but it being ok and colorful for 2 months and now turning brown looks like a po4 issue?

[lemonheadmech]

I wonder how I'm getting Po4 in there? I wonder if I need to get a different Po4 test to see if I'm getting false negatives, or could it be that the bacteria are exporting the Po4 out of the water column and into the rock and themselves faster than it is building up in the water column? Would a phosban reactor be the fix for this?

[gwaco]

i would say it is just the way the coral is ! or what i mean is yeah the coral looked really pretty in the store , but it only sits in there usually not enough time for it to "settle" in . you get it home and after it does settle in and starts growing it will do what is best for itself . if it means procureing a zoo that causes it to turn darker then that is what it has to do . lighting and nutrients in the water help determine this , so you may not beable to change the color back no matter how hard you try . its really kind of funny because people always want to buy the really colorful corals and leave the brown ones behind , then my l.f.s. always has deals on brown outs . i give him $10 a piece for them and they turn out to be some of the prettyist and quickest growing corals . color is only skin deep ! literaly .
theres that fine line between exactly what is nutrient poor water ( which supposedly keeps the colors in corals ) and water which enough nutrients to make things grow . me i like things to grow , so i don't care if their brown , green , purple , orange or yellow because they will do what they want anyways .

[Casey]

Brown is beautiful,that what acros do give it time and it will turn a color it likes in your tank.

[lemonheadmech]

Wow, I knew sps was very fussy in its upkeep, but not that fussy. I guess if thats the case I will just have to let them grow up and see what they do. So the tank battle goes on in keeping the water pristine for them. Thanks all.

[Hendersonracing]

thats what make sthe sport fun...If it was easy everyone would have a reef tank!!

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by lemonheadmech

Wow, I knew sps was very fussy in its upkeep, but not that fussy. I guess if thats the case I will just have to let them grow up and see what they do. So the tank battle goes on in keeping the water pristine for them. Thanks all.

but thats the thing ! their not fussy , we are !

[Geoff]

in general corals will turn brown if nutrients are high in the water column. there are not any hobby test kits that are accurate enough to measure PO4 for our purposes.

the easiest way to fight browning, and you have a sand bed is to get bigger lights. the higher light will cause the other coloured symbiots in the coral to express themselves as a kind of sun block over the zoax. zoax are brown and green.

if they are in a BB tank, then you need a bigger skimmer.

the corals will start to bleach if the lighting is to strong. if you are going up in PAR values you will need to acclimate the corals to this higher light to avoid initial bleaching.

HTH,

G~

[JY13131]

Ok that was confusing! First you said YES bigger lights will help...then you said too strong of lighting may make them bleach! I think I missed something there

[lemonheadmech]

I have no idea anymore. LOL

I think I may just leave the sps for those that can talk to the tank gods. I never had this much of a headache with lps. Maybe will have some various brown sps frags available hear pretty soon...

[Geoff]

LPS are different since they perfer higher phosphate levels. they are not located on the reef top where nutrients are very low.

if corals are turning brown over time, then the phosphate levels are elevated in the water column. increasing the lighting will burn off the zoax in the coral allowing the other coloured symbiots to express themselves.

if you add higher lights you need to acclimate the corals to the higher light, or they will bleach. as you increase the lighting strength you increase the food production in the coral. the coral can not handle this and the symbiots will start to jump ship, causing the bleaching. this is also why in BB tanks you see bleaching when the same higher lights that were used in a DSB tank are used in a BB tank. the corals are just not able to cope with the increase in food production. the corals need to be acclimated to the increased lighting.

once the corals are acclimated to the higher light, those symbiots used as sunblock (those pretty colours) will be more expressed because less zoax are needed for food production in the corals. at some point if nutrient levels increase further the algae is then able to take over the tank and smoother the corals themselves. AKA- tank crash.

does that help explain things a bit? it is very confusing.

G~

[JY13131]

better! I am getting stronger lights this week so this is good. so i should move everything lower and run the lights less hours per day?

[Geoff]

most find it easier to run the lights for a shorter period of time then ramp them up to full time over the next month.

what lights do you have now, and what lights are you going to?

G~

[hng]

Update? How are the acros doing?