SPS coral care

Oh and nutrition problems. Over polished water.

 

Let's back up. What is the cause of brown in SPS and work from there.

 

Browning sps can be caused from low par, too much nutrients,or even not enough flow

 

Change in coloration of the zooxanthellae and or type.

 

To our eyes, the couple of colors of zoox are going to appear the same when combined. They are going to look brown. Even if the particular clade of zoox changes, they are still going to look brown to us.

 

Light and inorganic nitrogen. Anything that can increase zooxanthellae population density within the coral. However, as far as I'm aware experiments have failed to show dissolved phosphate increases zooxanthellae densities. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what the reason is, probably something to due with membrane transport mechanisms.

However, nitrate and phosphate have both been shown to decrease the rate of skeletogenesis in scleractinian corals. So, if your nitrates or phosphates are high, your corals will grow slower.

Also another point that should be mentioned regarding light is what type of SPS coral is it? We always say SPS corals like lots of light and often that's true, but it depends on the coral. There is a big difference between shallow and deep water collected corals for example. Some deep water acroporas will be more sensitive to light than many soft corals for example.

 

Please don't go so deep and confuse. I only want to walk them, step by step, through the basics. Please hang around though because I do want to get into that.

 

This actually makes sense too me...

 

So are you saying this is like mixing primary colors. Mix red, green and blue you get brown?

 

Well, think of it this way:

Corals have their own pigmentation, and they also host zooxanthellae, a golden brown symbiotic algae. The zooxanthellae resides in the outer tissue of the coral and can therefore change the perceived pigmentation based on the density of the algae within this tissue. If the density is low, the corals natural "colorful" pigmentation will become more apparent. If there is a high density of zooxanthellae, the algae will become more apparent and the perceived overall coloration will shift to brown.