i had some SPS under 400 watt 10k Reeflux and the acros didnt seems to grow too quick until i moved then under a t5 seutp… on the other hand the Montipora i had started to grow pretty decent. Everything colored up real nice under t-5s instead of being brown…
anyone know which bulbs make corals turn which colors? all my browns seemed to have turned green except one birdsnest is pink
Pink is good!!
There are some studies out there on the net-ther land about Spectrum, PAR and PUR. if i can find them again, i will post em. some basics seem to be, reeftop acros are generally browned out by the abundance of full spectrum light. all the red and green and yellow in the light saturates and grows the brown looking zooxanthalae the best. so corals look brown under high, fuller spectrum light intensity. you might try moving to a higher Kelvin lamp . more blue, less green/yellow./red. and perhaps grow more colorful pigments to capture the remaining blue light. they may grow slower, but perhaps brighter colors to our liking.
or so the story goes.
i have brought in alot of wild and aquacultured colonies in my short time as a reef keeper, and i’ve noticed what everyone knows…that the default color for corals is brown. it seems as though, especially for the wild colonies, that when they are stressed they will brown out. shipping, getting used to synthetic salts and synthetic lighting, and different parameters are some of the reasons this happens.
i also noticed that after alot of sps (typically acropora) browns out, the next color it develops is green, and then it will return to the color it finally should be. this process takes months, and this has happened to colonies on multiple occasions.
i’m not 100% sure it’s the color temp of the bulbs i’m using, because these corals have been in multiple tanks under completely different lighting, with similar results.
I think that sounds right! No matter what your bulbs are, spectrum wise, it will probably be a big change in spectrum, PAR and PUR from what a coral grown on the reef is used to. I believe Each coral has a wide spectrum of zooxanthalae in it to work with. the one best adapted to the local light conditions will dominate in time. but in the event of a change, the default is back to a brown algae, with a more general spectrum tolerance. and then, over time, months, the zooxanthalae best able to exploit the new local light conditions will multiply and prosper and take over, along with new absorbtive coloration pigmentation.
Does that sound plausible?
Which is why, after setting a new frag and adapting to the new tank light, we just leave it alone to make its change. not moving it around every week or so. or changing lights and stuff. it takes time for the zooxanthalae battle to reach a conclusion and victor. The one best suited to our tank lights. and that may not be its best, wild reef color, it could be duller , or perhaps even brighter than the reef. we do skew our lights to the blue.
i have noticed the same “default” as you would say color of brown then to a green. now my birds nest has skipped the green part but the rest havent. The acro i got from DPA was brown is now green with green polyps on the sunny side up section and brown on the rest.
I did read on the Link to RC about photosynth. and 24/7 lighting cycles that too much light = more brown color due to the over producing of food.