Help with brown Montiporas

[mikellini]

Wondering if someone can help me figure this out... I've been stocking my tank with a variety of monti frags, and health-wise they seem to be doing well, polyps extending, not much growth yet but it has been about a month or two... Most frags I've added have browned out within a couple of weeks, although a few have held their colour. Just did another round of testing today:

Salinity 1.026
Temp 78
Alkalinity 9.0 DKH
Calcium 450 ppm
Magnesium 1360 ppm
Nitrate 0.25 ppm
Phosphate 0.00 ppm

All tests were Red Sea, aside from the phosphate (hanna checker). No reason to believe they're inaccurate, also tested some new water and results were what I expected.

I'm dosing vinegar saturated with kalk to keep nutrients low, I think I'm going to feed a bit more and try to bring them up. No visible algae in the tank, don't clean the glass for over a week. Running carbon with some phosguard, I'm going to remove the phosguard for a week or so and see how much the phosphates come up.

I do think my water is maybe a bit too clean, but I've dosed Acropower to give the corals a boost, and they do show greater polyp extension but no change in colour. From what I've read, I should expect paler/lighter colours with ULNS, but not brown. The only other thing I'm thinking is maybe not enough light? But it seems that the corals getting more light are more brown. I'm running a kessil a360we, 8" above the water, 23" of water depth, 10 hour photoperiod ramping up to 45% and back down. It was higher but I decreased it to acclimate new corals and will try to bring it slowly back up to around 60%.

Could it be something else? Anything I'm missing? Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[snipertwobe]

i have a bunch of monti's i am not expert. but mine seem to like alittle dirtier water then what you have. i have had them growing and showing the best color with nitrates 2-5 and .09 phos. i would also crank up the light. brow to me says not enough nutrients or light

 

[mikellini]

Thanks for the reply, I was thinking browning out of stony corals would be more likely related to nutrient levels being too high rather than too low. But the light does make sense... Just need to be careful to raise intensity slowly. And I will try and raise nutrients up a little by removing the phosguard and feeding a little more. I'd rather not play around with the vinegar dose, but I may have to reduce that a bit if nutrients don't come up.

Any other suggestions?

 

[snipertwobe]

one thing at a time ... do the lights first.. and maybe feed a little more

 

[Triggreef]

I agree with the above comments. I have a ton of Monti and my Monti colors are great. My nutrients are high, last po4 test was .34 on a hanna. I have Monti in all lights levels from 80 par shaded from other corals right up to 350 par. I only run LEDs reef breeders and similar China LEDs as well. I do get the best colors in the higher par, but lower par Monti are not brown, just lighter not as vivid. I also dose vinegar spiked with alk, but I'm still raising my dose since my bio load is a little out of control. I only dose about 70ml per day on a 260g system, and I have not seen a huge drop in po4 yet. Been dosing that for over a year but up until a couple months ago my dose was only about half that. Hope that helps.

We should swap about half the water in our systems with each other. Lol

 

[mikellini]

OK, I'll definitely remove the phosguard. Right now I'm feeding frozen every second day, I'll bump that up to every day, along with pellets every day. And we shall see...

Light will start going up 1% every two days next Friday; that gives the latest batch of frags two weeks of acclimation time.

 

[PaulKreider]

I had mine lose its "shine" went from a nice bright red to a dull pale pink, caused by an alk swing im assuming, I think they like higher alk in the 8-9 range.

 

[saltyphish]

Will a browned out monti gain its color back or will only new growth show improvement?

 

[lionfish5740]

I have a bright green monti browned out from moving it to a new tank.
For 2-3 months just the new growth all around it was the nice bright color so it was really noticeable.
It took a while but the original part turned bright again. It looks better now than before it browned out

 

[miggs76]

My SPS tend to brown out when my water is too clean. When I have 0 nitrates and phosphates I lose color. At that point I start to feed heavily for a few days.

 

[maroun.c]

is it only the new frags you add that turn brown after few days? some corals will just brown up after addition and some will recover their colors after few weeks and some take longer time, so that's one possibility. Do you have any older frags that are colored up?
Also my Monties were the first corals that would brown out or look bad when nitrates/phosphates would start rising.

 

[mikellini]

New frags usually take a week or two to lose colour. Although some never did; the setosa and spongodes are still bright, as well as a purple cap and Superman digi.

I've just started to feed more and increase the light, I will give an update in a couple weeks