How do you keep "Reds" in your corals?

[Salty1962]

I thought since the previous thread was so successful that we could do one on Reds in your corals. We all often have spoke about keeping a coral's color vibrant. Wanted to start a thread about how people are achieving these colorations, is it Elements, Lighting or Flow that is making you successful with the coloration?
I'll start with my question:
How do you keep the Reds in your corals? I'm having a difficult time getting my SPS's to color up in the Pink/Red spectrum.
How do you do it??

 

[Ezeke1]

This isn't really related to what to do dose for achieving reds but I wonder if lightning plays a role. For instance the JF flame acro shows more red in lower light placement but in high light the color tends to change into more pink base.

 

[TRPlacek]

Following. I too have an issue with keeping reds dark in one of my tanks. can't figure it out. great growth though.

 

[Salty1962]

I thought since the previous thread was so successful that we could do one on Reds in your corals. We all often have spoke about keeping a coral's color vibrant. Wanted to start a thread about how people are achieving these colorations, is it Elements, Lighting or Flow that is making you successful with the coloration?
I'll start with my question:
How do you keep the Reds in your corals? I'm having a difficult time getting my SPS's to color up in the Pink/Red spectrum.
How do you do it??

New color

 

[Nihilus]

Which kind of red? The Kedds Reds, the Acans, the Tracyphyllia? Some of them are just prone. Then again those lights can change everything sometimes...

FWIW I just bought a "Red Dragon" sps. Will see how It goes...

 

[mcarroll]

Most of us don't measure our lights – we guess – and almost none of us measure our flow – there are no tools – and many of us have issues with nutrient imbalances – there are no standards for live-stocking a tank.

A lot of times, what this means for coral is an unstable environment as we move corals around, change their environment or try this, that and a bottle of snake oil to find "what'll make them color up".

Corals need a minimum of flow, light and nutrients.

Corals also need stability and lack of disturbance.

• We almost always fall down on the stability front with nutrients. Usually this relates to complications from an overstocked tank.

• Some folks routinely fidget with their lighting color, etc, which minimizes lighting stability. "Too much control without having a goal."

• Flow is something none of us are even equipped to measure, first of all, so it's actually the hardest of the three to get right. Second, it's something that folks mess with more often than their lights – minimizing stability.

 

[oneofmany]

So when it really boils down to it it's just a change? (for better or worse) A blue thumb perhaps?

 

[Sabellafella]

I thought since the previous thread was so successful that we could do one on Reds in your corals. We all often have spoke about keeping a coral's color vibrant. Wanted to start a thread about how people are achieving these colorations, is it Elements, Lighting or Flow that is making you successful with the coloration?
I'll start with my question:
How do you keep the Reds in your corals? I'm having a difficult time getting my SPS's to color up in the Pink/Red spectrum.
How do you do it??

Reds and pinks (accented color) from what ive seen correlate to actual light spectrum. Red acros on the other hand, i feel achieve their true red color from higher lighting intensity(except the fox flame =). Also red/pinks can come in with maturity. Another one to toss up are trace elements. But great topic, would love to hear some experiences and studys.

 

[dave57]

Dose some potassium for red colors

 

[spartanomega21]

I've always had issues with red acros so I will be watching this closely!

 

[Big E]

If your other colors look good you can assume your nutrient levels are in the ballpark, so it comes down to lighting............spectrum and intensity.

Some depends on individual coral species.........for example a Red Dragon will show much more deeper reds at lower par...........too high it's going to be more of a pastel pink.

Buy a Red Planet! Easiest red coral I know to color up..........you still need the right lighting spectrum but it's a deep vibrant red at the right par levels.

It's a lot easier to pull reds out of corals with T5 or halides. T5 setups with coral+ plus bulbs help pull red coloration.

If you have LEDs and poor reds run your white diodes at about 20% of the blues and get some coral+ bulbs to supplement.

 

[rovster]

Add T5 to your LED. Seriously....Although my reds are still not "red" my "red" corals look better after having added T5s to my Radions. Don't get me wrong, everything looked great before but corals with red tendencies look better under T5 or Halide.

 

[markalot]

I wish I knew. I'm seeing some of the best reds I've ever had in a few corals and I'm not sure exactly why. I will relate my current thoughts and results, but I'm not sure how valuable they are.

This is an unkown, either wild or maricultured.

This is a Red Robin

I really think it has a lot to do with coral genetics and how used the animal is to tank parameters, but it seems truly random coral by coral. Adding CaNO3 to get my nitrates measurable increases the color of the top coral but the Red Robin turns more brown red as above. I have a maricultured bluish piece that turns mostly brown if nitrates are elevated but my green pieces seem to love it.

PO4 stability, not a set number but stable, seems to be extremely important as well. This is my 3rd attempt to color SPS and most successful. I keep PO4 stable around .05 (I use PhosphateRx, 3 drops daily)

My KH stays around 6.7. I would rather be too low than too high.

I have stopped fiddling with the lights, I set the LED's on my hybrid fixture and left them alone and I stick with BigE's bulb combination of 2 Blue+ and 2 Coral+.

I use a larger media filter filled with Seachem Matrix to control Nitrates. It took 6 months but now I have trouble maintaining nitrates. I find this much preferable to using carbon dosing and my skimmate doesn't stink up the house anymore. I would rather have less bacteria in the tank, which I think lowers the risk of infection if I do something stupid and stress the acros.

I do feed Reef Roids but not on an exact schedule. Just like Nitrates, Reef Roids seems to benefit some acros while having no appreciable effect on others.

I do not regularly dose Potassium but I have been regularly dosing a small amount of trace elements daily using AF MicroE at 1/4 recommended daily dose (it contains copper, beware). I doubt this is doing anything but it gets me in front of the tank daily.

I do water changes only when things look off and there is no explanation. My best reds were after 3 months of no water changes ... not sure this means anything except that my export methods seem to be working ok at the moment.

It does seem that reds do suffer when PO4 is elevated based on observations from other reefers however there are exceptions. I think reds are tough because they can easily be brownish while other colors tend to mask the browns.

ramble ramble

I have become a huge skeptic of using any product to improve colors. At the moment, if I had to make a short version, my only conclusions are:

1. If NO3 is clear on the salifert test colors will be suffering. Some pink is always better, 2 to 5 seems to work best for my selection of corals except for one maricultured piece.

2. Stable and decently low PO4 has been critical to my success. Not a magic number, but stable. I say decently low even though the first coral pictured had those colors when my PO4 drifted up to .08 and I increased my PhosphateRx drops to 3 daily. For me this points to how the PO4 number is not as critical as how stable it is. When I was using GFO I had all kinds of issues with swinging PO4 and stressing corals. Using daily drops the drift is slow and levels remain fairly steady.

3. I do not like carbon dosing in an acro dominated tank. We all make too many mistakes and added bacteria seems to increase the risk of infection, sort of like being in an enclosed room with a bunch of sick people. I've switched to using a stable media to control nitrates.

Not sure this is helpful but there it is.

 

[Bubs2]

Like Ezeke said, my Red Planet was light pink with small bits of green when placed at the top of the tank. When placed near the sand it turned a darker pink and accumulated more green on the base and stem

 

[jlanger]

I think lighting plays a big part of it.

I had troubles getting my red Montipora hodgsoni to look red again after I upgraded my tank and lighting.
I changed from 8 bulbs of T5 to Vertex/Ecotech LEDs. My corals did great with growth and most colors, but red. The bright red montipora looked more of a dull ruddy rouge than red. I decided to add two bulbs of T5 to supplement the LEDs and the red coloration in the montipora came back.

I tried dosing the Red Sea Colors program and it did nothing to bring the red color back.
I have always had great colors in my corals, but that one red coral was stubborn to the lighting change.

 

[mcarroll]

I changed from 8 bulbs of T5 to Vertex/Ecotech LEDs.

Good example! What was the change in PAR/lux?

 

[jlanger]

Good example! What was the change in PAR/lux?

I never measured.
When I switched over to LEDs, I ran an acclimation period for about a month as the lighting intensity ramped up. At the time, I had lots of large montipora colonies that I used to gauge how the corals were adjusting to the lights. I consider my green colonies to be the "canaries in the mines" as they would lose and gain their colors the quickest. It was the red colonies that never quite regained their color; until after I added the T5 bulbs.

 

[markalot]

I've been able to keep a nice reds using all LED in s smaller tank, but my Nanobox fixture has strong cyan channel which helps a ton in my opinion. I make sure there is no hint of purple in the blues, meaning the cyan channel runs a little stronger than the royal blue channel, and this seems to do the trick. Both a red cap monti and a red acan have held a good red color. When I ran a Maxspect Razor the reds all turned muddy purplish.

Personally I can't maintain acros under all LED, even with the shading problem solved. I know people can do it but adding T5's just makes it easier ... easy enough for me anyway.

 

[icedgxe]

What are your settings for your nanoboxes?

 

[mcarroll]

I never measured.

Lighting does play a big part – and unless you're using non-reef lighting, the biggest part of it is the intensity.

Unless you knew that intensity didn't change at all, I'd be comfortable ascribing any differences you noticed to a change in brightness. I think this would be generally pretty true, but especially so in a tank with relatively high nutrient levels.

Really wish you had measured so we had the comparison!

FWIW, I've heard some folks conjecture that reflective red colors are more common to shallow-water corals....which might indicate a need for a bit more light. Which you gave them!

2¢