Yellow sps completely faded.

[Graffiti Spot]

That looks like a strawberry shortcake so its going to be green and pink. They look yellowish in the ocean and after shipped over here look yellow from stress. The price of them has gone down a lot so thats why the store probably focused on the fact that it looked yellow.
The hard part is understanding what coral has what colors and choosing them to find a true yellow coral. Especially since the indo ban, a lot of the true yellows are there, I haven't seen too many come from aussie sources.

 

[angela223]

ohh i see okay. so now that we've established that its a strawberry shortcake then do you know why the other colour is faded? My other acros that were faded have got back its green already for a long time. so if the other colour is green on this shortcake i dont get why its not come back yet.

 

[jda]

Looks like an Aussie Shortcake to me. Red and Green. All of the posts from page one are still correct. This is probably a lighting thing... these need a ton of light and a Hydra alone will not be able to give it to them without burning them. Most people who keep acropora under Hydras have lots more success after adding T5s.

 

[angela223]

What are t5's? is that an additional light? i dont think i have space anymore for another light.. also i looked on youtube where some people did a PAR test with hydra HD and it managed to get 500+. So shouldnt it be fine?

 

[angela223]

http://www.aquaillumination.com/lighting/hydra/

if you scroll all the way down theres a par graph they created for my lights. but does anyone know how to read it? what are the numbers at the bottom of the graph? Is it saying that if i put my light a certain distance from the water then i will get a certain par?

 

[jda]

First, don't ever believe what a manufacturer tells you... get another source. Some LED manufacturers and DC pump makers are among the tops not to be trusted. I am not saying that AI is wrong, only that i would not believe them until I saw the numbers elsewhere. In any case, numbers of a 36x36 area are useless since nobody would use a Hydra 26 to light an area that large and would probably use 3 or 4 of them. This link seems more like marketing than science to me.

Spectrum, output/power and coverage are the trifecta of good lights as far as the coral are concerned - apps, form factor and coolness are important to some reefers. Hydra are just Ok spectrum IMO, bad for coverage with lots of shadowing and output depends on your needs and if you can stay inside of the "cone" of light that they produce directly under them since the fall off pretty quickly as you move farther away. Yes, T5s are another light source which are good at all three of these things.

 

[jda]

That test is also over open air which is also incompetent at best and purposefully misleading at worst.

From reading a few independent reviews, about 250 PAR at the top of your rockwork is about what you can expect with normal settings. You can probably get more by cranking stuff up higher, but this also comes with dangers of burning coral.

 

[Sea MunnKey]

@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

Hhmmm something's weird here. Your first picture vs second last picture looks different ... structure of the coralites. Second image looks like the Aussie SSC

 

[angela223]

@jda oh.. sigh. So my hydra26 hd + t5’s will be good? Will t5 be enough on its own? Or do i have to have it with the hydra? Also what is coral burn?

 

[markalot]

My unnamed lost all yellow just before dying due to low calcium.

It was starting to suffer here with the middle turning bluish and bright yellow slowly fading to red. Within a month it was gone. Double chekc everything, get Alk stable, make sure it has good flow, cross fingers.

Here the lower branch has already died. 2 weeks left.

I was an idiot and didn't test everything when it started to suffer. I knew my calcium doser was having issues but I underestimated the extent of the problem. I lost half ot the Lokani (first picture, bottom right) as well.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Looks like an Aussie Shortcake to me. Red and Green. All of the posts from page one are still correct. This is probably a lighting thing... these need a ton of light and a Hydra alone will not be able to give it to them without burning them. Most people who keep acropora under Hydras have lots more success after adding T5s.

I don’t supplement my hydras with T5’s but I have 2 52 HDs 16” above a 50 gallon cube. I had lots of problems with acros when they were 12” or less and trying to get low nutrients. Now I don’t care about low nutrients. I blast them with the ab+ spectrum, feed a lot and watch them grow. With great colors as well.

 

[angela223]

@Chaswood79 do you have yellow sps that are doing fine under those conditions? if so, what height would you recommend me to put my hyrda26 HD at? Also can you give me your file on the ab+ spectrum? i searched it up on google and found a video that Bulk reef supply made on the ab+ spectrum. is that the one?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

@Chaswood79 do you have yellow sps that are doing fine under those conditions? if so, what height would you recommend me to put my hyrda26 HD at? Also can you give me your file on the ab+ spectrum? i searched it up on google and found a video that Bulk reef supply made on the ab+ spectrum. is that the one?

That’s the one. The 26 actually has a better overall spectrum than the 52. 16-18” above the water will reduce/eliminate the hot spot lighting. My schedule is 4 hour ramps up and down with a 4 hour peak. I don’t have any true yellow sps, but I do have a couple orange passions that are doing great. Do you have a par meter?

 

[Shooter6]

@Chaswood79 do you have yellow sps that are doing fine under those conditions? if so, what height would you recommend me to put my hyrda26 HD at? Also can you give me your file on the ab+ spectrum? i searched it up on google and found a video that Bulk reef supply made on the ab+ spectrum. is that the one?

I think you keep missi g the point that strawberry shortcake is not supposed to be yellow. Yellow = already stressed. It wasnt healthy and happy when you bought it and has go e down hill since. Mine is a mi t green like the i side of an andes candy with deep red polyps. Slow grower but has encrusted the plug and has new sticks growing from the plug now.

 

[angela223]

@Shooter6 okay i dont care what colour it is. The point is is that its stressed out now and it has lost its other colour and its not as vibrant as when i first got it.

 

[angela223]

@Chaswood79 sadly no i dont have a par meter :/ which is why i wanted to know how to read the par graphs that ai has given to give a rough idea. I had my lights at about 20cm above water line.. is that probabaly why it lost color?

But anyway i just changed my lighting scheduele to the ab+ from BRS video. Hopefully that fixes things..

 

[phixman]

My unnamed lost all yellow just before dying due to low calcium.

It was starting to suffer here with the middle turning bluish and bright yellow slowly fading to red. Within a month it was gone. Double chekc everything, get Alk stable, make sure it has good flow, cross fingers.

Here the lower branch has already died. 2 weeks left.

I was an idiot and didn't test everything when it started to suffer. I knew my calcium doser was having issues but I underestimated the extent of the problem. I lost half ot the Lokani (first picture, bottom right) as well.

How low are we talking ? 300 for calcium ?

 

[phixman]

Hydras are not powerful enough in my opinion , they are good for a mix tank . I have to run my hydra 26 hd at max to hit 350 par in my frag rack which is about 4-5 inches from water surface of my nuvo fusion 20 with hydra being 10 inches off the water . I’m upgrading to radions xr30 g4 pro since it’s basically x2 the intensity . I would maybe rent out a par meter from your lfs, and check your par levels .

 

[markalot]

How low are we talking ? 300 for calcium ?

Below 300, it was really bad. I can't find the number but IIRC it was 260. I was quite lucky I didn't lose everything. Just goes to show how much more tolerant acros are to calcium issues. I dumped over a gallon of calcium part of the 2 part into the tank over 3 days to correct the issue.

 

[angela223]

@phixman well i do have a mixed tank. I only have a few sps lol. its just theyre not doing well thats all. everything else is doing fine though. and its weird because i saw a video of a guy doing a par test on some hydras and his hit around 450-500 at 9.5" above water level. so i dont know ):