Purple Deaths a little brown?

Darren · Feb 9, 2008

I have a large colony of PD's. The seem at times to have a brown tint to them. Any ideas? Too much light / not enough light? You can't tell it much in this picture.Thanks.

Hypertek99 · Feb 9, 2008

Too much light. They like the shade better

Darren · Feb 9, 2008

Thanks I'll move them down. My Nuclear Greens really took off once I moved them down. For a long time the polyps were few and they were spread out. Moved them to the bottom and they are forming a nice little colony.

143gadgets · Feb 9, 2008

Hypertek99 said:
Too much light. They like the shade better

My experience seemed to be the exact opposite. I moved mine from a shaded area to direct light and the are intense. I guess this is relative to how much light is actually getting to them. Mine are under 250w Radium 20ks.

Pdosen03 · Feb 9, 2008

Water quality can also play a large part in the browning of PD's...make sure your water quality is in check.

Eklikewhoa · Feb 15, 2008

Can you elaborate on water quality?

If I'm not mistaken zoanthids/palys fare better with not so super clean water like what you would do for sps right? I am having the same problem with my PD's regardless of where I put them. I am running a reverse photo-period fuge and have a cpr bakpak on my NC12g. Lighting is a 70w MH.

Azurel · Feb 15, 2008

Hey Darren what type of lighting you have? I have had PDs under direct lighting and had them be deep purple and had them in shade and had them get kinda brown and vise versa. I also think the K value of the lighting will play a certain role as well or how much actinic lighting is being used. Personally I think it is elevated nutriants that might play a bigger role with them being deep purple much like SPS turns brown with certain elevated nutriants.

Azurel · Feb 15, 2008

Eklikewhoa said:
Can you elaborate on water quality?

If I'm not mistaken zoanthids/palys fare better with not so super clean water like what you would do for sps right? I am having the same problem with my PD's regardless of where I put them. I am running a reverse photo-period fuge and have a cpr bakpak on my NC12g. Lighting is a 70w MH.

Personally I think it is a misnomer that z and p's like "dirty" water, water that is low in Nitrates, phosphates, silica etc will be better for all creatures in our tanks.

I think that when people say "dirtier water" because of some of the locations that z and p's come from in the ocean they forget to realize that when in the ocean there is large flows of water that may or may not be consistent from one moment to the next that has excess nutrients. Not to mention what benefit is these excess nutrients and how does having them in your tank give any real benefit to the polyps?