Yellow sps completely faded.

[angela223]

Hey guys, so i have a strawberry shortcake acropora and its completely lost all of its yellow colouring. Its literally just pink shades now. It still has its polyps out though. I know yellow colours depend on nutrients. Nitrate 2 and phosphate 0.02. But i was wondering if theres anything else thats involved? I have been struggling to keep my phosphate low. Its always around 0.04 and my nitrates are at 2. The problem is whenever I do a water change or use redsea Nopox, my nitrates goes to 0 while my phosphate goes to 0.02. So how do I reduce phosphate without reducing nitrate?

 

[miPapareef]

Lanthium chloride or GFO will reduce your phosphates.

But I personally would not reduce below the levels you are at now. How are you testing? If you don’t have significant algae growing, I’d believe those levels and look elsewhere for the color loss. It’s a balance of light, Alk, nutrients and stability of those. Then some coral just need some time to color back up after placing into your tank.

 

[angela223]

oh. could it be too much light? I have hyrdra hd 26. I have it 20 cm above water level. so the acro is about 30-40cm from the light

 

[jda]

It is probably lighting. Spectrum, not quantity. Hydras alone do not make awesome acropora lights for a lot of folks... the benefits from adding T5s are widespread.

I have shortcake under about 750 PAR and it thrives.

All of this being said, most shortcakes are pink and green and do not have any yellow (unless you are black-lighting it). Are you sure that this coral is supposed to be yellow? Did you mean a pink lemonade, by chance?

 

[angela223]

Hmm weird. Cos i asked some ppl if hydras are good and they said its fine for acros. And yes its strawberry shortcake. It looked exactly like this. Even the lfs i bought it from said it was yellow when i went to pick it up in person.

 

[angela223]

Could it be because my alk and nutrients are unstable? I do constantly have to add redsea alk buffer everyday because it keeps decreasing and my nutrients havnt been stable either. I always have to add nopox everyday as well.

 

[Dlealrious]

I dont know if shortcake is yellow, i have 3 different types in my tank and they all are bright pink tips with light greenish body. I also have another yellow acro which is bright yellow. Though im in Australia so we only get oz collected species.

 

[jda]

When that coral is rocking, it is green and pink, not yellow.

 

[phixman]

Light or spikes ( alk, salinity ) I too have a hydra 26 at max it reaches 400par about 10 inches off the water . Upgrading to radions xr30 g4 pro, expensive , but x2 light intensity , great for sps

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I would guess the fish store you bought it from sold you a wild coral which looked yellow from shipping stress and what not. Now its changing to what it should look like. The only shortcake that looked slightly yellow was the old school original tabling kind with pink polyps and green body with not much pink in the branches at all. But most out now are the wild aussie ones that are mostly pink and green in the base.

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

who can say but i thought the same thing.. wild colony settling into less than perfect lights... LED only.

could be some form of micro nutrient as well. yellows are the toughest color from what i know.

come take a look at my awesome wild yellow colony. its floursecent green now

 

[angela223]

@Pedoconfuego Um it cant be changing to what it should look like because it has completely faded to just 1 colour when before it had 2 colours. It was pink/ yellow before and now its just pink. The yellow/light green parts are all faded to a white/ grey so how can this be what its supposed to look like? Dosnt make sense

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I've seen back when there used to be some fake Strawbery Shortcakes and yes they tend to be pale yellowish. The real Aussie SSC has green base and red coralites

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

@Pedoconfuego Um it cant be changing to what it should look like because it has completely faded to just 1 colour when before it had 2 colours. It was pink/ yellow before and now its just pink. The yellow/light green parts are all faded to a white/ grey so how can this be what its supposed to look like? Dosnt make sense

If it is a wild colony then all bets are off in terms of what color "it should be". If other corals in the tank are not experiencing color shifts then it is likely due to lighting. The majority of wild colonies transition into something bland.

This is all on top of the fact that this thing never really looked like a shortcake to many.

It is a credible hypothesis in terms of what is going on is all i am saying.

 

[jda]

Most coral have to expel their zoox and rebuild if they need to get back to their normal color. This is especially common with wild corals. This means a very pale phase, then light green (what a lot of people all yellow), darker green with hints of the true color and then back to the normal color.

That coral that you posted is A. Microladous which I do not think has ever come in a true yellow. Perhaps you have a different coral, but only a photo from your tank could tell.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Picking a coral thats actually supposed to be yellow is the hard part, they are not many around especially now. Keeping the yellow is all about nutrient and light strength and spectrum.

@Pedoconfuego Um it cant be changing to what it should look like because it has completely faded to just 1 colour when before it had 2 colours. It was pink/ yellow before and now its just pink. The yellow/light green parts are all faded to a white/ grey so how can this be what its supposed to look like? Dosnt make sense

It may take months to go through the color changes and show what it really looks like in a tank, thats what I mean by changing. Without a picture of your fragment no one will be able to help you figure out what is really happening. I am just guessing.

 

[James Johnson]

Having zero nitrates and zero phosphates is not a healthy tank it is a starving tank. Nitrates at 2 are perfect, phosphates at 0.03-0.05 are perfect. I typically see shortcake fade and loose color in low PAR. This is a very high light coral and prefers about 450par.

 

[angela223]

@James Johnson what is par? sorry, im really new to all this light stuff. I have hydra26 HD. is that 450 par?

 

[angela223]

@Sea MunnKey @Pedoconfuego @jda Also i managed to find a picture of what it looked like originally when i first got it. So is this a strawberry shortcake? or did i get scammed lol

 

[angela223]

This is what it looks like now lol. Just under white lights. You can see that all the pink is still there but the other colour completely gone. (bottom acro, not the top one)