corals have faded...... help

[wampuscat]

My parameters are mag 1470, cal 440, alk 8.5 dkh and my nitrates are 0. The tank is 150 gallons and I am running a euro-reef rs180 skimmer and the fish are yellow and chevron tangs, 2 onyx clowns, borbonis anthias and a stary benny. I feed about one cube of frozen food everyday and the tank is bare bottom.

Could you give me some advice on how to get my corals colored back up?

 

[lazyreefer]

What sort of lights are you running and how old are the bulbs ??

How much flow do you have in the tank ??

What kind of corals do you have ??

 

[Troylee]

+ 1 on the questions asked above... Lights and flow are the ticket!!!

 

[wampuscat]

Right now I am running t5's, 2 sunlight supply TEK retro kit's with 1 KZ Fugi purple and 3 Giesemann Actinic +. I was running 3 150 watt Phoenix HQI's bulbs off of Icecap ballasts in Sunlight supply reef optix 3 fixtures and 2 of the Actinic +'s. I thought maybe I was hitting them with too much, so I cut back a little bit.

I have plenty of flow.......Dart return pump, Vortech MP40, 2 6100 Tunze controlled by 6095, 2 6025 Tunze and 1 6045.

Most all of the corals are faded..... Mostly chalices, zoo's, ric's, frogspawn, favia's, acan's, candycanes and blasto's.

 

[wicked demon]

are the zoas opening?
are the LPS getting puffy?
how often is your water change schedual?
Do you have PH stability probs?
are the corals looking brown or white?
when you cut the light back , how much?

 

[Mainstream Aquatics]

It doesn't look like you have any corals that are too difficult to keep. All of the corals you named demand a really low par rating. I'd look into external factors too. Any chance you have a rusted screw or something in the tank or something else contaminating the tanks?

 

[mr_X]

i think it's too much light. i am willing to bet you have a lot more PAR now since you got rid of the 150 watt halides.

 

[Typhon]

What is your pH and Temp? Are you parameters stable?

Also what you do mean "faded"? RTNing, STNing or just the color is fading (becoming pastels)?

 

[kingfisherfleshy]

I dosed for alkalinity shortly after a waterchange...and my corals lost a little color. I think it was too many swings all at once...just give them some time, dont freak out, keep things stable. Hopefully they will recover unless you are making some sort of major mistake.

 

[greg 45]

Try raising nitrates , are you feeding enough ???

 

[JOSE CASAS]

Less light photo period, take a hour or 2 and feed like crazy. Also you can put more fish. This is one of the benefits of having BB.

 

[rock_lobster]

What about your pH check for pH swings

 

[wampuscat]

I took Jose' suggestion and have been feeding more and added four yellow tangs to go with the one that was already in there and also a blond naso tang.