What causes SPS to lose color?

[2una]

I see iron mentioned increasingly. AFR has iron and iodine but I'm dosing so little that it might still be insufficient. Definitely worth investigating. Is there a test for iron aside from ICP? My last ICP did show low iodine and did not detect any iron.

No test worth bothering with & iron would have to be close to overdosed to show up on icp also.
Just a wild guess but perhaps the softy's in the larger tank are in larger numbers than the smaller tank & perhaps uptake of iron/iodine is more in there so it's gotten more depleted?.
That's just a shot in the dark but like i said before 1-2 drops/day for a week ain't going to break anything to see if there's improvement on the monti's or not.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

No test worth bothering with & iron would have to be close to overdosed to show up on icp also.
Just a wild guess but perhaps the softy's in the larger tank are in larger numbers than the smaller tank & perhaps uptake of iron/iodine is more in there so it's gotten more depleted?.
That's just a shot in the dark but like i said before 1-2 drops/day for a week ain't going to break anything to see if there's improvement on the monti's or not.

Dinner plate sized toadstool (I have no idea how to frag that bad boy), branching GSP, kenya trees, sinularia, and xenia with a dash of clove polyps because I just couldn't throw them out all in 10 gallons. I sometimes wonder if they actually do something cool and invisible to the water and have often regretted throwing out the massive xenia colony from my previous tank because I now think it was the thing that kept nutrients in check. That said, three toadstools and a big ol' sinularia that needs regular haircuts in the 50...you might be on to something! Worth a shot! This slow coral decline thing is getting old.

 

[ScottB]

This is one I'm curious about as well. I'm under the impression that there are nutrients and then there are nutrients. Is it possible that I can have elevated nitrate and phosphate but they are still somehow not useful to the corals?

What is more essential is the precursor nutrient: ammonia. It is easier to consume and process. Next most valuable is bacteria, the ones that consume phosphate. SPS eat those bacteria. That is how they uptake phosphates. Perhaps when you had dinos (and zero phosphates?) that bacteria population took a hit.

Fish are an ideal source of ammonia. They are constantly releasing it.

 

[ScottB]

Dinner plate sized toadstool (I have no idea how to frag that bad boy), branching GSP, kenya trees, sinularia, and xenia with a dash of clove polyps because I just couldn't throw them out all in 10 gallons. I sometimes wonder if they actually do something cool and invisible to the water and have often regretted throwing out the massive xenia colony from my previous tank because I now think it was the thing that kept nutrients in check. That said, three toadstools and a big ol' sinularia that needs regular haircuts in the 50...you might be on to something! Worth a shot! This slow coral decline thing is getting old.

A big toadstool (IIRC) can throw off some stingers into the water. Fuzzy mushrooms are worse, but I am pretty sure these do too.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

What is more essential is the precursor nutrient: ammonia. It is easier to consume and process. Next most valuable is bacteria, the ones that consume phosphate. SPS eat those bacteria. That is how they uptake phosphates. Perhaps when you had dinos (and zero phosphates?) that bacteria population took a hit.

Fish are an ideal source of ammonia. They are constantly releasing it.

It's interesting you mention the bacteria population taking a hit from the dino battle because I keep coming back to this thought, too. I feel like the dinos did something to the system, caused an imbalance, and it has never truly recovered, and my dinos were not that bad!

I did have an AquaBiomics test done on both tanks back in June/July while trying to get to the bottom of the 10g tanks unexplained success with SPS corals and the results were interesting, but I don't know what they really mean for my corals and when I tried to clarify with Eli, I didn't get a response. However, he did not identify any pathogens in either tank (although both showed low levels of vibrio at the time) but the tanks were overall very different in which bacteria dominated the system. The 10g had a dominance of what he described as "an unusual family" labeled as J115 which he said is not well known and unusual in aquariums at this level. The 50g was dominated by Oceanospirillaceae which is not unusual but unusual at this level. What that means for corals if anything, he did not say, but we do know that the tanks are bacterially very different.

Back to the dinos, it was interesting to find out that I did manage to truly eradicate ostreopsis dinos from the 50g. Interestingly the 10g sample showed the presence of ostreopsis, but it's never been a problem there.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

A big toadstool (IIRC) can throw off some stingers into the water. Fuzzy mushrooms are worse, but I am pretty sure these do too.

The biggest problem I've had with toadstools is the occasional shedding and when they finally decide to throw off that skin it's me with a turkey baster trying to suck it all up and rescue any corals down flow. A fresh bag of carbon never hurts! Funny enough my toadstools seem to more often be the victims of aggression even though I've often heard they can be aggressors in the land of chemical warfare. The kenya tree in the 10g is all that keeps the toadstool in check lol. No mushrooms in either tank.