What turns a yellow coral green?

[Earl Karl]

So I have two frags of an all gold acan lord, those who has seen my earlier post, that was the same acan. I gave a frag to my friend and a few days later, it turned yellowish green. Then back to gold. Then back to yellowish green. However, my frag is still all gold. What factors cause yellow corals to turn green?
The picture below is what the all gold acan usually looks like, just imagine this as a greener acan.

 

[James M]

Too much light will cause a acan to turn a different color

 

[mtraylor]

you will need indirect light to keep it that way.

 

[Coralreefer1]

Lighting, feeding and water parameters

 

[John3]

High iron could as well and might result in this type of almost overnight change.

 

[ZaneTer]

I am the same as john3
High iron turned a few of my corals completely green a while ago.

 

[mtraylor]

Acan lighting is very difficult to keep them from morphing. Too much light will change the color every time. You basically dont know what color your getting till it settles in. Just my experience with acans. The only acans I have been able to maintain the color are ones that are under cliffs or have indirect lighting. I do have sps dominant aquarium though. So I have tons of light.

 

[James M]

Acan lighting is very difficult to keep them from morphing. Too much light will change the color every time. You basically dont know what color your getting till it settles in. Just my experience with acans. The only acans I have been able to maintain the color are ones that are under cliffs or have indirect lighting. I do have sps dominant aquarium though. So I have tons of light.

This !

 

[lion king]

Blue(light) plus yellow coral equals green. Like most of us you are likely running a blue light heavy tank.

 

[Earl Karl]

I actually run whiter lights. The problem is, when I run bluer lights, the coral turns straight up orange, not green. I'm guessing high iron or too much light. It's a very complicated acan lol.

 

[Ron Reefman]

It's not an Acan, but I have a green zoa that I collect in the Florida Keys. In my tank it will stay green. But if I raise it up near the water surface where the PAR gets quite high, the zoa turns sky blue over a month. If I put it back down lower in the tank it will go back to green but it takes 2 or 3 times as long, 2 to 3 months.

 

[Earl Karl]

Ok it's definitely high iron. My friend did overdose on Seachem Reef Plus (which is liquid vitamins and trace elements, that also has iron) as he doses it into his food mix. I swapped the frags with my friend. The acan he gave me is now more yellow than green, the one I gave him went from gold to green. Now both frags are at my place, one is gold, the other is yellowish green now.

Now, how do you lower iron? My friend lives on campus so getting good water is pretty much impossible. He never does water changes anyways. Is there any method that removes iron? Polyfilter is one option. He also has a chaeto reactor with a strong grow light 24/7, but who knows how fast it would deplete iron.