Why my corals are turning brown????

erroldejesus · May 17, 2013

This is my first post.Firstable excuse my poor English. I have a 11 gal nano tank. All is fine , but my problem is because my corals turns brown. I make 1 gal water change weekly, my nitrates are 5, phosphates 10, ph 8.2, temp 80. I think the problem will be the leds I have in my nano. There are 12 cree leds (6 whites+ 6 blues) The whites are 6% power and my blues 25%. If I lower the percents they turned off. I only have two clowns , 8 months old aprox. My ricordeas are whites (before they were grees and orange, My duncan, some acans are brown. All of them are fine but the color is brown. I don't know what to do. Do you will help me with this situation? Thanks from Puerto Rico.

brentsreef · May 17, 2013

erroldejesus said:
This is my first post.Firstable excuse my poor English. I have a 11 gal nano tank. All is fine , but my problem is because my corals turns brown. I make 1 gal water change weekly, my nitrates are 5, phosphates 10, ph 8.2, temp 80. I think the problem will be the leds I have in my nano. There are 12 cree leds (6 whites+ 6 blues) The whites are 6% power and my blues 25%. If I lower the percents they turned off. I only have two clowns , 8 months old aprox. My ricordeas are whites (before they were grees and orange, My duncan, some acans are brown. All of them are fine but the color is brown. I don't know what to do. Do you will help me with this situation? Thanks from Puerto Rico.

Your nitrates and phosphates are really high, plus 80Âº is too high. And for your water changes 25% is a good amount of water to take out, so for an 11 gal just under 3 gal would be good.

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mike007 · May 17, 2013

Do you feed your corals? What is your lighting cycle? The whites are the ones that benifit the corals. They should be on at least eight hours a day. I would ramp them up from 6% slowly to allow corals to acclmate untill you get them where corals are looking good again. Keep an eye on temp would rather have arond 77-78 degrees.

TopNotchCorals · May 17, 2013

Nitrates and phosphates is what's causing your coral to lose their color, your temp isn't what's causing them to brown. 80 degrees isn't deadly but 77-79 is idea.

erroldejesus · May 17, 2013

Thanks for yours responses. My lighting cycle is 7 hrs. I not feed my corals. I feed my clowns daily. I feed with spectrum, tetracolor and flakes. 3-4 pellets and a bit of flakes. Maybe I have to feed one to another day. What do you think really what amount of water i will do? I forgot to tell you that the distance of my leds to the higher coral is 14". Thanks again

TopNotchCorals · May 17, 2013

I would feed every other day as your tank is pretty small and up your water change to 3g a week as stated above.

erroldejesus · May 18, 2013

I really apreciate your help. Thanks

ronnie · May 18, 2013

I ran my 120g SPS tank at 82-84 year round. So temp is as long as you don't see huge 5 degree swings. I also ran 5-10 on my nitrates, so those are fine as well.

What test are you using that you are getting a 10 on phosphates?

How many fish do you have?

Got a picture you can post?

NanaReefer · May 18, 2013

As far as coral color goes I think it would be more of a water parameter issue and or light issue more so then a feeding issue.
Please post your CA-ALK-MAG levels.

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