Are my sticks happy?

[hobbyreefer]

I've been in the hobby for 5+ years so I'm not exactly a noob, but all of my previous tanks have been mostly LPS. About 6 months ago I started may largest tank 60" x 26" ~150 gallons DT with full intentions of only growing SPS and mainly focusing on Acropora. I'm just interested in the challenge. My plan for this build is to only purchase from Battlecorals. My reasoning is I have always had positive experiences from Adam and I'm trying to limit where I get coral from so hopefully this will limit my exposure to pest. I have received two Battleboxs from Adam and I have a third coming in two days. Time will tell if I deviate from this plan.

My tank is only ~6 months old and it was started from man made rock. I know I'm fighting an uphill battle for the first year or more. I currently have about 15 SPS frags. Most are only a few weeks old at this point.

I have 3-4 frags that are encrusting (purchased in February) and have nice color and full polyp extension.

My digi lost the lime green at first, but I'm now seeing green appearing on the tips.

My BC Secale (first picture right side)- has very nice color but it has not grown at all in two months.

I would say about 50% of my sticks are brownish or faded but I think they are alive.

I'm having a hard time determining what color loss and browning means. A lot of threads mention this is caused by lack of nutrients (0 phosphate and nitrate). However, other treads mention too many nutrients can cause the Zooxanthellae to increase and cause browning.

My test kit show very low nutrients (~0 nitrate and my phosphate go very low unless I dump reefRoids in daily). However, I do get a lot of algae on the glass that requires scrapping every day. I'm thinking my nutrients are higher than the test kits show.

Here are some pictures under mostly white lights. What do you guys think? Do these look like typical new frags? Are they dying?

I will say there have been some pretty significant events happening in my tank over the last few months. I had a major Dino outbreak and then hair algae. I also removed all sand 2 weeks ago have have gone bare bottom. My DKH has always been between 8-9 but I'm slowly bringing it down to around 7.5. I did an ICP test recently and everything was normal except for a small amount of Tin in the water. I'm still trying to determine the source since all of my equipment is new and nothing looks visibly damaged. I'm running a new ICP test in a week or two to see if levels are increasing or decreasing. I've performed a few decent size water changes in hopes of removing any contaminate.

Can you guys scan through he pics below and give me an opinion on if these frags seem relatively happy for a new tank? I'm just not sure what "normal" looks like when it comes to new SPS frags. How normal is it to lose color? Does this always happen with new frags or should I be concerned?

5' tank and 2' deep
5 kessil 360x plus 4 T5 bulbs (3 blue plus and 1 actinic) -
LEDs run 8am -8pm and T5s run 10am-7pm - Par is 300-400 throughout the vast majority of the tank
35ppm Salinity
77-79 temp
Current DKH is upper 7's for the last two weeks staying steady
Corraline growth cover the rocks and the overflow
4 MP 40s on reef crest ramping up to 95%
UV Sterilizer
Nyos 160 skimmer
12 fish
Phosphate runs between .01-.1 depending on how much reefroids I add
Nitrates is very low regardless of what I feed - I'm hesitant to dose neonitro but I have some available.

At this point I'm really considering to stop testing for Nitrate and Phosphate and just let a few months go by to see what happens. I don't have a lot of confidence in the nutrients tests.

 

[dadnjesse]

Well brown is better than white. A lot of times corals will become brown from stress of being cut and moved. It can take months for them to color back up. Try and keep your tank stable .

 

[Crustaceon]

Stress will do it. If you’re seeing encrusting and color development, you’re doing good. Keep everything stable and everything will eventually look better. Sps is all about being in it for the long haul and it can take months for some sps to recover from being stressed, especially and most frustratingly, acros. Just remember to avoid rapid changes in alkalinity, salinity, temperature, nitrates and phosphates.