How do you keep "Reds" in your corals?

[Big E]

Spectrum and intensity both play a role in coloration. Put simply, if your light doesn't supply the spectrum that excites a particular pigment it won't show the color........there's no way of getting around that. It's also in that same respect with chromo proteins and reflection.

This is why people are adding T5's to LED setups....... the T5's add the spectral point that a particular LED unit may be missing.
The T5's also create a more uniform spectral coverage across the tank.

You can also run into these same issues with bulbs if you don't have the right combination. It's not as difficult because some of the blue/purple bulbs will carry a wider range of spectrum even if they are very heavy in one area.

Look at the chart below........you have to satisfy every point on there if you want good colors across the board in respect to coral pigment excitation and emission of the colors.

The goal is to have a complete spectral range that is consistent across the whole area of the tank so that no matter where you put the coral it will get the needed spectrum. Then all that is required is to have the coral at the correct height to achieve the intensity it needs to show off the colors the best.

With respect to a red coral if you don't have the spectrum to excite it's pigment or for reflective chromo proteins it won't look good. You may have a rusty looking coral or just brown.

If you don't have the right intensity(high or low, depending on species) the corals won't grow enough...........growth= color. The intensity also has to be correct in order for the correct spectrum to reach the coral.

Spectrum and intensity also play a role in how we see the corals with our eyes. Too blue of an ambient look over a tank mutes red to our eyes. Overbearing blue mutes the red.because it darkens the tank.

This graph below illustrates this well.......... you can see as the tank gets darker it's harder to for us to see red. Also notice how high green, yellow and orange are..................you can create this in a tank by turning all the white lighting off & those three colors will stand out the most especially green. Also note how muted dark blue and purple become.

So, basically the tank needs to be bright enough for the colors to pop......if it's dark due to not enough intensity or coverage the colors will look muted. The only way for us to see that brightness is to have enough intensity and also white for our eyes to see this as bright.

So in a dark tank, a red coral will look rusty colored or orange/brown even if the color of the coral is actually there.

One major watch out is you can't just turn up white LEDs to create that brighter look. They contain a unnatural hump in some of the excitation areas...... too much of that and the coral implodes.........it's seen a paleness and bleaching. It's caused from an overabundance of H202.......the coral can only release so much of that at a certain rate.

 

[markalot]

What are your settings for your nanoboxes?

Cyan (Rebel Blue and Rebel Cyan diodes) 100%
RB and Violet 80%
Lime 70%
White 15%

I run full for 6 hours with a 1 hour ramp on either side. Cyan, RB, and Violet on for 10 hours with 1 hour ramp up and down for a total of 12 hours lights on.

On my SPS tank T5's on for 6 hours.

 

[mcarroll]

Most LED reef lights are not "missing" any colors.....one of the biggest myths of "full spectrum" and something that's easy to obscure or gloss over with the right charts.

(A term that had some actual meaning before LED marketing came around.)

 

[BigJim]

Red is typically the color that has been the best for me. I don't dose anything special for colors. I have three Kessil A360We and 4 T5. I noticed an increase in the red intensity when I added the T5 and adding a Giesemann Super Purple brought it out even more. Here are a couple pictures of a tierra del fuego and Red Planet. I can't get the tdf to grow vertically, but the color is great.

 

[TylerS]

I think the starting point for this should be what gives any coral it's color. The answer to that is pretty well known - the zooxanthellae.

http://coral.org/coral-reefs-101/coral-reef-ecology/coral-polyps/
"Most coral polyps have clear bodies. Their skeletons are white, like human bones. Generally, their brilliant color comes from the zooxanthellae (tiny algae) living inside their tissues. Several million zooxanthellae live and produce pigments in just one square inch of coral. These pigments are visible through the clear body of the polyp and are what gives coral its beautiful color."

Basically we have to find what encourages the growth of zooxanthellae algae that reflects the red spectrum, and make sure we're providing that spectrum to the tank to make sure it can be reflected back for us to see (unless the reflected spectrum doesn't match the incoming spectrum?). So certainly at least part of the equation is lighting.

I wonder about the shifts from pink to dark red. If the zooxanthellae is semi-translucent or not populated with enough density to hide the white skeleton that would cause a pinkish color while a dark red could mean more healthy population of zooxanthellae and possibly faster growth rates?. Color changes could also be related to certain zooxanthellae outcompeting others (don't know if this even happens). I wonder what within the zooxanthellae determines it's pigment color or amount because it could also be the same zooxanthellae with biological changes within it causing the pigment color to change.

 

[Salty1962]

My biggest problem is that my frags that are suppose to be Red are actually Green

 

[mcarroll]

My biggest problem is that my frags that are suppose to be Red are actually Green

Can you post the amount of light over your tank? In lux or PAR is fine.....at minum, watts. (A KillAWatt and lux meter should be standard reefer equipment....I gotta know these things!!!!)

 

[mcarroll]

"Turning up the color knobs" on the light or adding over-colored bulbs isn't really what we're trying to figure out, is it? (The T5 "full spectrum" crowd already covered that ground ten years ago. It was the "new photoshop". )

Isn't that kind of faking it when we add color like that anyway? I know from reading and looking at tank pics in the "full spectrum" threads that many of us do it. And since there is no standard for "full spectrum" who's to say anyone's "favorite color" is "wrong"? Especially when you're just starting out and maybe have little point of reference?

(BTW, the best "full spectrum tanks" I've seen have light settings that are indistinguishable from "ordinary" 14K-20K LED lighting....which reinforces the idea that "full spectrum" is still just a marketing term.)

Fluorescent pigments in corals are photoprotective. This suggests that you might want to apply more light in these situations, if you really think there are no issues (in composition or stability) with flow or nutrients but that corals are still under-colored. That still seems like a bit of a leap to say for "all under-red corals in all situations", as most corals have low light requirements before they start applying their defensive systems. The reality is that "enough light" is easy to accomplish for corals with almost any correctly installed reef light.

Because of this ease with lighting, my bank says that 9 out of 10 times, bad color equals lack of stability or quality in nutrients or flow.

Most likely nutrients, IMO....most tanks are "top-heavy" with nutrients, so balancing is difficult.

But the reality is that you'd have to look into each and every case individually....there's no magic "color bullet" aside from what it takes to make 99% of all corals happy.

2¢

 

[mcarroll]

Dose some potassium for red colors

Do you test for potassium?

 

[mcarroll]

Sorry! I just noticed that there's no free article for that link I posted above...the PDF link is there (and the Abstract is informative!!!), but it's not a freebie.

We now report that in excessive sunlight FPs are photoprotective; they achieve this by dissipating excess energy at wavelengths of low photosynthetic activity [ed:red light], as well as by reflecting of visible and infrared light by FP-containing chromatophores.

This info (especially the diagrams that show photosynthesis "in action") might help that makes sense:
http://plantphys.info/plant_physiology/light.shtml

For example:

Excited electrons can fluoresce
You can also see in the figure above, that when an electron is in the lower excited state, it can drop back to the ground state and the energy lost can be re-emitted as a photon of light in a process known as fluorescence. This light is, of course at a lower energy level, thanks to the second law of thermodynamics. That means of course that the re-emitted photon is of a longer wavelength. Chlorophyll fluoresces at a deep-wine-red color at the limit of human vision.

Below a certain depth, chlorophyl is responsible for emitting 100% of red light. (For anyone paying attention, I posted another link from Mobley on that earlier this week.)

(This helps me a lot!!)

....Now for more reading!....

Try out this quote from Photoprotection of symbiotic dinoflagellates by fluorescent pigments in reef corals (by Anya Salih , Ove Hoegh-guldberg , Guy Cox) instead:

In this study, fluorescent pigments were found to be present in tissues of the majority of corals from shallow water intertidal habitats, as well as in corals from lower light, shaded or deeper water habitats. The location of these pigments in animal tissues relative to the position of algal symbionts, however, was found to be clearly different in high light- versus shade-acclimated corals. The FPGs [ed:fluorescent proteins] were mainly located above the symbiotic algae in the epidermis and outer parts of the endoderm (gastrodermis) in high light-acclimated corals but were among and/or below the algae in the endoderm in shade-acclimated corals. This distribution strongly suggests that FPGs have a role in modifying the light environment of the symbiotic dinoflagellates of both light- and shade-acclimated corals.

Full article is available.

(We can all take note that "full spectrum" is not mentioned anywhere....light intesity is mentioned a lot, though!)

 

[Salty1962]

Can you post the amount of light over your tank? In lux or PAR is fine.....at minum, watts. (A KillAWatt and lux meter should be standard reefer equipment....I gotta know these things!!!!)

I'll have to see about getting a tool to measure it with. I currently don't have one

 

[markalot]

I have good reds when I shine a flashlight on my red acros. That's good red. I don't think it's fair to say we are coloring the tank with T5, instead we are trying to reproduce the proper spectrum for corals at depth when we only have a few inches of water to work with. If I put a yellowish bulb over my tank (like the AquaBlue Special for example) the red in that red acro is outstanding ... and after a few days it starts to fade under the yellowish light.

This is a milli under the same bulb combination, same 'PhotoShop' adjstments. Something must be wrong somewhere because it's not as vivid.

And this one (this is that nitrate hating maricultured piece) is totally broken.

Lighting can only accentuate what's there. Different acros produce different colors for different reasons. The Red Robin, for example, shows a pretty bright pink under blue lighting but tends to look washed out under daylights. This tells me it depends more on fluorescent pigmentation for the reds. My pink acro looks very good under daylight and does not glow nearly as much under blue lights. Obviously, depending on the spectrum provided, each coral will look different. That Red Robin is dark grey under a flashlight. It's an odd one.

 

[mcarroll]

If anyone happens to read either of those links I posted, please holler back in this thread!

 

[markalot]

If anyone happens to read either of those links I posted, please holler back in this thread!

This one you linked too is my favorite: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.474.4650&rank=1

FPG = fluorescent pigment granules

Moreover, a number of coral species, particularly Acroporids (e.g. Acropora hyacinthus, A. palifera, A. nobilis) were found to have both intensely fluorescent morphs as well as non-fluorescent morphs, which were almost indistinguishable in appearance under visible light.

Underline is my emphasis. Unfortunately we don't know if they are talking about a bright red coral or a dull brown one when comparing fluorescence. What I have found that seems to complicate matters even more is that some acros develop great colors that are non fluorescent but they only do so if bathed in a lot of blue light, which also increases fluorescence in other corals. So if you are looking at two strikingly red acros under white light you cannot say for sure if one is fluorescing while the other is not.

--

The significant finding of the present study was that their localisation in tissues was generally related to the light environment of corals. Examination of corals from the reef flat, the shallower upper slope or of samples taken from the sunlit outermost (i.e. light-acclimated) parts of colonies, revealed that most of the FPGs were concentrated above the endodermal symbiotic dinoflagellates (Table 2, Figure 4). In these cases, FPGs formed large clusters within the epidermal layer, which in shallow water corals was found to be much thicker than in corals from deeper slopes. Fluorescent pigments in shallow water corals were also frequently found within both the epidermal and the outer part of the endodermal layers, but again located above the symbiotic dinoflagellates and distributed in such a way as to form thick pigment screens.

In contrast, examination of fluorescent pigments in corals collected from deeper slopes, from under overhangs and from shaded parts of coral colonies, revealed that the FPGs were concentrated below and/or among the layers of algal symbionts. The outer epidermal layer in such samples was found to be very thin and in the majority of cases lacking any fluorescent pigments. Where FPGs were present in this layer, they were widely scattered and did not form pigment screens

So for me the takeaway is that it depends on the coral. You can't apply one hard and fast rule to a reef tank full of acros whose source is unknown. I like to think of it similar to selecting and creating cultivars of terrestrial plants, except juuuust a bit more complicated. Find a red sprout of a common plant and grow it, clone it, sell it as a fancy red plant for landscaping, even though you'd be hard pressed to find one in the wild.

With acros it's much more interesting. Was this acro collected high up on the reef slope? Is the color a result of FPG or is it a non florescent morph? If it's a highly florescent morph is it one of the varieties that looks spectacular under blue lighting but drab under whiter lighting? If it's an acro the looks better in lower light what does this mean? Do the FPGs and algal symbionts share the same space or are they exhibiting the same behavior as above but simply adapted to lower light?

I shined my flashlight in the tank this morning to double check what I said above. That duller pinkish milli I posted is actually pinker under the flashlight than the pink coral I first posted. The Red Robin is brown and grey with no hint whatsoever of any red. In my mind this means the Red Robin depends on FPG's to create the color we see and without the 'proper' spectrum it will look bad. I know if I put a AquaBlue Special in by bulb mix it looks horrible, maybe now I know why? Or maybe it simply needs more light to move the FPG's to the surface? Or perhaps it's something else still.

 

[mcarroll]

So for me the takeaway is that it depends on the coral. You can't apply one hard and fast rule to a reef tank full of acros whose source is unknown.

While I agree in part, I also have to call partial "bee'esse" because we can easily find tanks full of super colorful corals where those corals were equally as unlikely to have come from identical collecting sites. But every coral looks great at once.

So "one rule" (time to adapt plus good, consistent conditions) can apply to a whole reef tank full of corals.

That's the cool part – not every coral needs individual conditions. There are a set of minimums, or minimum ranges. And in most cases, corals are very, very adaptable.

We ascribe "better" and "worse" to how these various adaptations look...and here's where the complications come in...

More to come...

 

[markalot]

While I agree in part, I also have to call partial "bee'esse" because we can easily find tanks full of super colorful corals where those corals were equally as unlikely to have come from identical collecting sites. But every coral looks great at once.

Unless the tank has been slowly pruned of under performers until every coral looks great.

-or-

Corals can adapt faster then some of us think, explaining why some corals tend to color up quickly while others take months or even years.

 

[mcarroll]

Unless the tank has been slowly pruned of under performers until every coral looks great.

-or-

Corals can adapt faster then some of us think, explaining why some corals tend to color up quickly while others take months or even years.

I'm sure pruning has happened in some cases, but I've seen enough tanks that were just the set of corals that someone bought over time...so that it can't only be that.

I do wonder about the adaptability part – especially after that article.

I haven't seen anyone analyze that in detail yet. I've never seen it mentioned whether pigments (or symbionts) were moved during adaptation, or how long that took, for example.

 

[mcarroll]

We ascribe "better" and "worse" to how these various adaptations look...and here's where the complications come in...

More to come...

(took me a while..)

Where do we get the ideas of what is "better" or "worse" since we know (from that article) it has nothing to do with that as far as the coral is concerned?

Many of us looks at pictures of coral online before we buy. (Duh!)

Most folks don't seem to get an in-person look at their frags before they buy anymore, let alone the mother colonies.

The pics we see are often very beautiful, but are rarely representative of what you would see in person while looking at the same coral.

Check out this blog article (not mine): The Camera vs. The Eye

I can resist using the same quotes the blogger quoted:

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera ‘saw’ a piece of time and space.

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing LOOKS photographed.

So we rarely have any real basis on which to form an opinion about what a coral "should look like."

Despite these realities, we still feel like we've seen the coral...so we have expectations:

We should be able to reproduce the image of the coral we see in the pictures, in our tanks at home.

Right? (It's an easy "trap" to fall into.)

In setting up our expectations the way we do, it should be obvious that we are setting ourselves up for many cases of disappointment.

You can see these cases reflected in the threads here on R2R.

• Some folks can't get happy about their results whether they spend $10 or $10,000 on their lights.
• (But, crucially, also others who seem able to grow tanks full of smoking corals with any light they choose.)

So, this doesn't help if your ORA Orange Monti is looking brown, for example...that's a real case of bad color. And improving light, flow and/or nutrients will help.

But this business about expectations and imagery is a real angle on what we're talking about.

 

[BigJim]

I don't want to speak for the OP or step on anyone's toes, but I think this thread has broadened to become somewhat off topic. My previous post probably wasn't so useful either. I'm thinking maybe we reboot the thread and ask the OP for tank parameters and lighting information to try help them improve their red corals.

 

[mcarroll]

I disagree.

How does the OP know how pink/red his corals are supposed to be? He has to have a frame of reference to come at the "problem" this way.

I'm not saying he has no problems with light, flow or nutrients or that his corals couldn't be redder and pinker.....I'm just saying we can question the frame as well.