pale colours sps

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

high lighting + low nutrient = pastel color in corals. Some look good that way some look bad that way.

Feed your corals, they are probably anorexic for now. Give them zeovit amino acid, coral vitalizer and Fauna Marin coral food. It is a long shot but they will regain beautiful colors if you feed them right and not let them starve.

Read Coral magazine article ''is your reef anorexic''. it is a good article about low nutrient and starving corals.

My red planet is striking, very red and green at the base. I have about 5 ppm nitrates and .1 phosphates, so it's far from low nutrient. The way I see it, the only advantage of a ULN is not having to deal with algae. The inconvenient is pale pastel corals and problem with LPS and gorgonians.

This is bang on. I'm all over the low nutrients because I like algae less than I like darker colours on my corals. My red planet is more of a 'pink planet', but it's growing like a weed and it's still quite striking nestled amongst a bunch of corals that are practically luminescent yellows and greens that only took on those shades under my lights/nutrients. I took a tiny frag of the red planet and put it on the other side of the tank at the bottom completely in the shade where it grows much, much slower, but it gives me the green base that it's so famous for - though still a pink instead of a red body.