Forrest Fire Digitata & Lost Color...

pmaddox · May 12, 2017

I'm scratching my head about an issue in my tank that's been going on for a while. My forrest fire digi is light pink-ish. It's lost the deep red it once had and I can't figure out why. Other pieces of acro and the general health of the tank seems fine and stable. The digi sticks out as the most faded even though the polyp extension is good.

Check out my params over time here (use the 150g tab):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17hGDk1hSgmBUhVNmyJh7MQ0C8uAdMzveuJd6iMef8uQ/edit?usp=sharing

nrupaw · May 12, 2017

got a pic?

any other corals touching it? I had a montipora start touching my forest fire digi. It didn't RTN/STN but it pretty much turned brown and polyps stopped coming out. It kept growing. I ended up fragging a small piece of it and within a few weeks, that frag colored up again to lime pink body and orange polyps. Thats when i figured that maybe its the other coral messing with the digi

maxwell · May 12, 2017

Hi
You been adding zinc or in a supplimens
Bill

Scorpius · May 12, 2017

Loss of color is usually too much light and/or low nutrients which you don't have. On a side note I'd work on getting your alkalinity more stable as I see some pretty large swings on you data sheet.

jlanger · May 12, 2017

I agree with getting your alkalinity to a more stable number; and possibly lower.
I use my Forest Fire Digitata as an indicator if my alkalinity starts to rise. When the alkalinity is below 7.5 dKH, the coral has great polyp extension and color. When the alkalinity level starts getting closer to 8 dKH, the polyps don't extend as much and the coral doesn't look as nice; the color doesn't fade, but the lack of polyp extension hurts the overall appearance of the coral.
My coral also loves the bright light and high flow.

pmaddox · May 12, 2017

@nrupaw: Nothing is touching it and in this case it's a lot of different chunks of FF digi so I think I'm good there.

@maxwell: I dose Seachem Fuel (although I ran out) but nothing else except Ca, Mg, Alk

@Scorpius & @jlanger: I manually dose so it's really hard to keep it where I want it. Alk moves the most even though it's not apples to apples (dKh Alk vs PPM for Ca). I have a 'goal' Alk of 9dKh. Think that's too high then? It's interesting that you have experienced those symptoms in your tank with the same corals. I am going to look into that. I guess, at a minimum, I need to get on a more measured and daily dosing of Alk. to eliminate swings as the issue. I have been studying images in my iPhone and the red was VERY deep red and I noted green in the sticks back in January / February. By late March, it had faded.
I have a Gyre150 in the tank set at about 75-80% and it's pushing a lot of flow over that spot. Also, 3 Kessil A360WEs. One is DIRECTLY over the FF digi so I am 'guessing' I can rule that out.

Reefltx · May 13, 2017

pmaddox said:
@nrupaw: Nothing is touching it and in this case it's a lot of different chunks of FF digi so I think I'm good there.

@maxwell: I dose Seachem Fuel (although I ran out) but nothing else except Ca, Mg, Alk

@Scorpius & @jlanger: I manually dose so it's really hard to keep it where I want it. Alk moves the most even though it's not apples to apples (dKh Alk vs PPM for Ca). I have a 'goal' Alk of 9dKh. Think that's too high then? It's interesting that you have experienced those symptoms in your tank with the same corals. I am going to look into that. I guess, at a minimum, I need to get on a more measured and daily dosing of Alk. to eliminate swings as the issue. I have been studying images in my iPhone and the red was VERY deep red and I noted green in the sticks back in January / February. By late March, it had faded.
I have a Gyre150 in the tank set at about 75-80% and it's pushing a lot of flow over that spot. Also, 3 Kessil A360WEs. One is DIRECTLY over the FF digi so I am 'guessing' I can rule that out.