New to corals, no glow :-(

[Shaggymv]

Howdy all
New to corals

I have a BioCube 32. Yesterday I added a small zoa frag and a rock with GSP
It was glowing under blues last night.

today they really opened up under the full lights, but the blues are on now, and nothing is glowing.

Any ideas?
BioCube32 standard LEDs

thanks!

 

[Townes_Van_Camp]

They are gonna ask for pictures under white light and tank parameters. It’s not to be jerks. It is so that they can give you the best information possible. And welcome to the board. I’m also new but nose my way into every conversation I can.

 

[Shaggymv]

 

[Shaggymv]

They are gonna ask for pictures under white light and tank parameters. It’s not to be jerks. It is so that they can give you the best information possible. And welcome to the board. I’m also new but nose my way into every conversation I can.

Thanks. Attached

 

[Smite]

Everything is open so that is a good sign and those zoas don't look like they are stretching for light. The tank looks very clean, how old is it?

There is one major parameter missing in that test, your specific gravity/salinity value. I'm wondering if it's low since your big three (alkalinity, calcium and magnesium) are all on the low side. Your alkalinity should really be above 7 dkh.
Temperature?

I'd look into purchasing your own test kits: The true reef starter pack would be:
refractometer or other form of salinity checker
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium
Accurate way to monitor temp.
I love salifert for the big 3 parameters. The kits are cheap, easy to use and accurate.

I'm not familiar with zoas or GSP loosing color. For me they either open or they don't. Now if you're comparing the blue look of the LFS to your blues there will probably be a major difference.

Consider moving that GSP to its own island unless you want it to take over your main structure. Just a tip from someone who made the mistake early on!

Looking pretty good so far. Hopefully someone else can chime in on the changing of pop.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

As a Biocube owner, That’s what your corals are supposed to look like under white lights. They’ll start to fluoresce more under pink and blue lights.

 

[Tamberav]

Yah they look normal. They will glow more under blue only. Different lighting will effect corals differently.

 

[Shaggymv]

Everything is open so that is a good sign and those zoas don't look like they are stretching for light. The tank looks very clean, how old is it?

There is one major parameter missing in that test, your specific gravity/salinity value. I'm wondering if it's low since your big three (alkalinity, calcium and magnesium) are all on the low side. Your alkalinity should really be above 7 dkh.
Temperature?

I'd look into purchasing your own test kits: The true reef starter pack would be:
refractometer or other form of salinity checker
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium
Accurate way to monitor temp.
I love salifert for the big 3 parameters. The kits are cheap, easy to use and accurate.

I'm not familiar with zoas or GSP loosing color. For me they either open or they don't. Now if you're comparing the blue look of the LFS to your blues there will probably be a major difference.

Consider moving that GSP to its own island unless you want it to take over your main structure. Just a tip from someone who made the mistake early on!

Looking pretty good so far. Hopefully someone else can chime in on the changing of pop.

Tank is pretty new, only a couple weeks out of its cycle.
The zoas were bright Orange last night in my tank, but today nothing. (They opened a lot more)

the GSP tips were just emerging, but they were glowing green. The came out nicely under the lights today, but no glow under blue.

salinity is 1.028
Tank is a bit warm at 81 (fan on order to try and bring that down)

going to start dosing to bring alk, ph, and calcium up. (Would that kill their glow?)

 

[Shaggymv]

Yah they look normal. They will glow more under blue only. Different lighting will effect corals differently.

This is the GSP under blue

 

[Just John]

Just my experience, but I have had a couple corals that looked really bright the first night and less so after that. Over a week or so they brightened back up. They look healthy, so they should return to normal.

 

[Smite]

Tank is pretty new, only a couple weeks out of its cycle.
The zoas were bright Orange last night in my tank, but today nothing. (They opened a lot more)

the GSP tips were just emerging, but they were glowing green. The came out nicely under the lights today, but no glow under blue.

salinity is 1.028
Tank is a bit warm at 81 (fan on order to try and bring that down)

going to start dosing to bring alk, ph, and calcium up. (Would that kill their glow?)

If your parameters are very different from the water they were in it can take time to adjust like Just John mentioned. Your salinity is a little high actually. Shoot for 1.025 gives you some safe room for error with a small swing in top off ect. Dose or do a water change with quality water. At this stage don’t chase ph but correct the rest. Your ph may work itself out with a higher alkalinity value. Just make sure you have good surface agitation.

 

[Oldsman]

Our gsp looks like that under whites in the biocube too, kinda dull brown lol.
They'll pop more as they open up, you could also run the other 2 channels on lights to overlap .
8.1 ph is the highest my stock biocube ever gets, don't chase the number stability is key .that number will fluctuate throughout the day anyway.
Everything looks good, just bring your 3 elements up SLOWLY , and enjoy the tank

Here's mine a year old

 

[adittam]

I would suggest a few serial water changes to gradually bring your parameters in range. Maybe 15-20% each change, twice a week for the next couple weeks? That will be gradual enough to not make major swings in your parameters, and should be sufficient to replace the low elements, especially with only a couple small corals.

 

[adittam]

Also, I’ll second getting that GSP rock off by itself in the sand bed. You can always decide to let the GSP spread to more of your rock work later…it’s a lot harder to remove it after it’s spread.

 

[MaxTremors]

Are you running the white and blue channels at the same time or separately? You should be running the blues for 12 hours straight and the whites for 8-10 hours in the middle of that 12 hour block (so both channels are on while the white are on. The reason I ask is that I’ve seen a few biocube owners on the forum who either weren’t or didn’t know that you can (and should) be running both channels at the same time. I believe the biocube also has a ramp up/down feature, which I would also use. Under plain white light your corals won’t fluoresce, so if you aren’t running the blue light with the white, they’re not going to ‘pop’ like they do under blue light.

I don’t know if you can adjust the intensity of each color channel on the biocube, I have a nanocube which is nearly identical, but you can set the intensity of the different channels, so I have my lights ramping up for to two hours to a max intensity of the blues at 100% and the whites at 40%, which runs for 8 hours, and then ramps down for two hours, and then no lights for 12 hours. If you can do something similar on the biocube, I would recommend it.