New frag uglies

[Skep18]

Do you guys find that new SPS frags either brown out or lose some color or vibrance in the weeks or months following their addition to your DT?

If so, would you say it's more normal to see these uglies as opposed to not seeing any adjustments?

 

[bubbaque]

Frags do change a little color after being cut as they transition from being a growth tip to starting their own encrusting. I would say if your tank is doing well your frags really shouldn't turn "ugly" though.

 

[Skep18]

Frags do change a little color after being cut as they transition from being a growth tip to starting their own encrusting. I would say if your tank is doing well your frags really shouldn't turn "ugly" though.

Yea, i say ugly. I was just wondering what visible changes people see. If a frag goes from one system to another completely different one, I didn't know how much it'll change for others typically.

 

[LBCoralGuy]

I notice they lose a little color as they adjust to the new tank. Comes back in a week or two tho

 

[29bonsaireef]

If it's a fresh cut then yes, it's normal to lose some color. An encrusted frag shouldn't really lose color.. maybe have a color change depending on lighting, but it should hold its vibrancy if the tank is doing well.

 

[Skep18]

Definitely me then. Lol. It's good to see a lot of successful reefers though!

 

[vegamedic]

It's not just you. when my tank was a little younger i had a 10 piece frag pack from aqua sd completely brown out once in my tank. over several months they all changed from brown to green and several more months later (now) they're finally showing more subtle colors like blues and pinks. I was also bumping up my lighting during this time so it was interesting to see how the corals reacted with each increase. i just got two more 10 piece packs a few weeks back (30 sps in a 60 cube is a LOT btw) and noticed almost no color loss this time around.

 

[mtraylor]

I see the corals get more vibrant as the weeks go by. I constantly watch new frags go through what I call "Coloring UP". They will recover from shipping and gain more color as they get used to your aquarium. Some corals when shipped if they were fresh cut or maybe wild colony frags tend to loose more color in shipping, but as others said they will color back up under good conditions, but take a bit longer. The Corals should not loose color in your aquarium if all your conditions are right.

How old is your aquarium? Can you post your parms? Also post your filtration system and lighting. Maybe we can help a bit.

 

[Waters]

Most of my frags lose color but eventually color back up, months later lol.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

I would say most of the time for me at least, 70% of acropora will loose color for a month or so. Paling, browning or greening is common place. After the coral gets happy again color will come back and in many cases will have a slight color shift or in rare cases a major color shift, these changes in color are not always for the better. Yeah I had problems with browned acros for a while. Just what I have experienced with adding new sps frags. Its worth mentioning what that little frags goes through before it ends up in your tank. Fragging, glued, grown out hopefully, shipped and sometimes not under the best conditions, dipped for pests, maybe QT for a few weeks, put into a different tank with totally different water, different lighting and that goes double if QT was done first as does the different water. Its no wonder corals will brown or bleach and just loose color in general, its amazing they survive at all.

 

[maroun.c]

They should normally color back to their original beauty.

 

[ncaldwell]

I depends on the frag pretty heavily as well. Some spa like my red planet dont care where they go. But other can be way worse. I have one called a silverback something that took almost a year to get its silver blue colors back. It was encrusting and growing like crazy the whole time

 

[AllTheCorals]

That’s common of wild and mariculture coral. Aquaculture corals rarely change. They may look a little hurt for a month, if the lights/par are significantly different.

Best thing you can do is buy from vendors who run systems similar to yours. Most run 8-9 alk so I keep my tank 8.5. Most run t5 or led or I have t5 and led over my tank.