A. Sarmentosa losing color. Not enough PAR?

[SamMule]

Had this frag in my tank for a few months now. Haven't seen much growth, aside from encrusting. PE has been great. It had a beautiful metallic shimmer that is gone unless I shine a UV light on it.
Lighting is 4x T5's with Reefbrite actinic LED strip.
Went from this:

To this:

SG 1.025
Temp 77-78
Alk. 8.7 (have been slowly bringing down from 9.5 over the last month. Color loss began before change)
Calc 420
Mag 1400
Nitrates 5-10
Phosphates .03

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Had this frag in my tank for a few months now. Haven't seen much growth, aside from encrusting. PE has been great. It had a beautiful metallic shimmer that is gone unless I shine a UV light on it.
Lighting is 4x T5's with Reefbrite actinic LED strip.
Went from this:

To this:

SG 1.025
Temp 77-78
Alk. 8.7 (have been slowly bringing down from 9.5 over the last month. Color loss began before change)
Calc 420
Mag 1400
Nitrates 5-10
Phosphates .03

Alk is still too high for your low po4? Your no3/po4 looks unbalanced? Are you using gfo?

 

[lemonade]

Could be not enough light. Doesn’t look that bad though.. sometimes colors won’t show up until the coral starts new growth. How high is your lighting off the surface?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

.

 

[Ike]

Just from what I see it looks like too much light or not enough nutrients. The PO4 being .03 is concerning, and it goes along with the muted colors I see. This may be simple enough to fix with some more fish and more food.

Tell us about your lighting and the schedule.

 

[EW_Fish]

Just from what I see it looks like too much light or not enough nutrients. The PO4 being .03 is concerning, and it goes along with the muted colors I see. This may be simple enough to fix with some more fish and more food.

Tell us about your lighting and the schedule.

I agree with this. It could be the high light low nutrients

 

[SamMule]

Interesting. I thought .02-.03 phosphates were ideal for SPS

Also, wouldn't my euphyllia show signs of stress from low nutrients before my SPS?
I'm not disagreeing, I am asking. Still learning all of this stuff!
I do not use anything to reduce phosphates.
Admittedly, I have not tested it yet this week(Saturdays I do a full panel)
But it has been steady .03 for the last 3mo.

The tank is a Red Sea Max250. I am only running 4 of the 6 bulbs + the actinic strip. I don't know my PAR yet, but I have a seneye coming.
Bulbs are:
Blue+
Empty
Actinic
Coral plus
Empty
Blue+
36" reefbrite actinic strip up front.

Actinic. Strip is on a timer.
08:00-22:00
T5's are on 12:00-20:00


I have 2 clowns
Small yellow tang
Algae blenny
Coris wrasse
6 line wrasse
Pistol shrimp and goby
1 small emerald crab (I finally found one that isn't an axehole)

I feed ocean nutrition pellets 5x per week
Reef chili twice a week
Was dosing 10ml of red Sea AB+ every day, but my nitrates came up to 20+ and I had several corals get very unhappy.
So I have stopped that until my nitrates get down under 5.
They are close now.
Water changes have been about 20% weekly.

Is my photoperiod too long?

 

[Simplyorange]

Would you happen to know the par on that piece ?

edit- just read you haven’t yet.

 

[SamMule]

@Chaswood79
In your opinion, what alk should I be shooting for with that PO4?
My target was 8-8.5 as I am slowly transitioning from RS coral pro to the blue bucket.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

@Chaswood79
In your opinion, what alk should I be shooting for with that PO4?
My target was 8-8.5 as I am slowly transitioning from RS coral pro to the blue bucket.

7.5-8

 

[SamMule]

Ok. Thank you. I will take it down to 8 then.

 

[SamMule]

Update:
Over the last couple months, I've made some changes with great results. I think the color now is brighter than when I got it!

Swapped the coral + for an aquablue special.

Reordered the bulbs to actinic, blue+, abs, blue+ from back to front.
PAR on this piece is around 350 IIRC.

Current parameters are:
S.g. 1.025
Alk: 8.4
Calc 400
Mag 1320
PO4 .02
Nitrates 16-32?
I'm unsure about the nitrate reading. I went to the red sea nitrate pro kit and am having difficulty reading it.
The hue is more purplish than the slides, but definitely a lighter color than the darkest color.

When I pull the slide out of the holder and compare, it looks more like 4ppm.

Things are really happy right now, so I'm not gonna get hung up on the numbers. Just gonna keep things where they are.