Strawberry Shortcake Acro turning all purple

[Aquatic Bobs]

I guess I'm really just confused why my strawberry shortcake Acro has turned from bright pink and purple to all dark purple. I got it from worldwidecorals about a month ago and it was healthy and showing good polyp extension, now the polyps don't come out barely at all and the whole frag has turned dark purple. My water has been at a stable 78.5 degrees, alkalinity has swung a little bit from 9.8 to 9.3 but for the last days since I hooked up my dosing pump has been at a stable 9.6. Magnesium at a pretty stable 1310 to 1320, calcium at 500, phosphates 0.10 and I have to AI Hydra 26 lights over a 75 gallon mixed reef tank. The lights are on the AB+ schedule with the whites turned up to 40%. Right where my strawberry shortcake Acro is located the par reading is about 370. I've also noticed my bubblegum digitata and forest fire digitata only partially extending 50% of their polyps as well. I'm pretty nervous and don't really know what's going on here :-(

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

 

[onetootreefor]

I guess I'm really just confused why my strawberry shortcake Acro has turned from bright pink and purple to all dark purple. I got it from worldwidecorals about a month ago and it was healthy and showing good polyp extension, now the polyps don't come out barely at all and the whole frag has turned dark purple. My water has been at a stable 78.5 degrees, alkalinity has swung a little bit from 9.8 to 9.3 but for the last days since I hooked up my dosing pump has been at a stable 9.6. Magnesium at a pretty stable 1310 to 1320, calcium at 500, phosphates 0.10 and I have to AI Hydra 26 lights over a 75 gallon mixed reef tank. The lights are on the AB+ schedule with the whites turned up to 40%. Right where my strawberry shortcake Acro is located the par reading is about 370. I've also noticed my bubblegum digitata and forest fire digitata only partially extending 50% of their polyps as well. I'm pretty nervous and don't really know what's going on here :-(

My wwc strawberry shortcake prefers less light than other acros closer to the 250 par range. That could account for your color change

 

[Purpletang92]

They look starved , are you feeding ? I’m going through the same problem, I upped my feeding and pe is back

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

I feed my corals once every 3 days. Once every 3 days I use Reef roids with the polyp lab polyp booster, and once or twice a week I dose a little bit of phytoplankton

 

[kevin_e]

Daylight pic? Looks like a skeleton covered in coraline under blue. I don't see polyp extension.

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

 

[kevin_e]

Do you ever see polyps? From my end it looks like a skeleton covered in coraline. Hopefully not.

 

[happyhourhero]

Looks dead to me too. Maybe it’s just extremely browned out and unhappy. Hard to diagnose.

 

[29bonsaireef]

It's definitely looking rough. Alk is pretty high for me, PO4 also.. hard to say what's the cause. LEDs could be frying it as well. How old is the tank?

 

[Potatohead]

How old is the tank?

Also my question

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

The tank is about four and a half months old now, early in the morning the polyps are out but just a tiny bit. Any recommendations?

 

[SeaDweller]

What are your NO3 levels? I have a SSC that BROWNED out as it came from a tank with super high PO4 and took 2 months to color up to classic SSC colors but it was a struggle. This tank was running MH and had all sorts of algae issues. In fact all frags from the tank were brown turds. Are you positive it’s purple and not brown? Check it under white lights.

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

Yeah I'm positive that it's purple, and it looks like it's still growing a tiny bit because the top tips of the acro have a little bit of pink in them

 

[29bonsaireef]

I can see living tissue on it. Your tank is still fairly new, and new tanks are harder to pin point issues. Just by the looks of it I'd say high alk mixed with LEDs is weakening the tissue, but that's a shot in the dark. Also curious to know your NO3 reading as well. Do you have a FT shot?

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

Sorry I meant to include this in my last post my nitrates run between 3 and 4 PPM. I have the two little fishies phosban reactor and my phosphates like two and a half weeks ago right before I set up the phosban reactor was at 1.0. Now its at 0.15 this morning.... that's a pretty big jump

 

[Potatohead]

Do you have any coralline growth?

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

Yes its starting to spread pretty fast

 

[Aquatic Bobs]

Hey thanks again you all for your feedback so far, this morning I'm looking at my strawberry shortcake Acro and I noticed that almost all of its polyps are extended out about an eighth of an inch. As the light continues to get brighter it looks like the coral is withdrawing its polyps.

 

[jda]

Polyps are used primarily for gas exchange. As the light stays on, the zoox in the coral provide o2 and use co2 and stuff and the coral does not need to exchange gas as much with the water. This is normal.