SPS coloring up

[thesilence87]

About 9 months ago, a piece broke off a friend's purple digi about the size of a half a pinky nail. He didn't think it was worth saving, but I did, so I put it on a frag plug. It lost it's color shortly after, but continued to grow.

Fast forward to now, and the frag plug is completely encrusted over and there are two branches coming out of the plug, but the digi is still brown. It went through a three week phase where it went completely clear, and then back to a deep brown, but it isn't going back to the purple it originally was. It has great polyp extension, and what I'd call reasonable growth, but I really loved the color that it had.

My question is, can I expect it to ever get that rich purple color back, or will it always stay brown?

 

[mockery]

Sps color is one of the hardest things to bring back.

What are your parameter? And are you dosing anything?

 

[thesilence87]

Oh boy...you're going to laugh, but I don't actually have the test kits to know. I do a 15% water change (5g of 32g water volume) with Salinity every two weeks, and everything grows, so since I'm a reefer on a budget, I haven't bought any of them except the ammonia I bought when I first started cycling the tank.

 

[liverock27]

Nitrates and Phosphates will keep your SPS from coloring up. Take a sample to your local fish store and have them test your water. Most will do the basic tests for free which include Nitrates, so at least you will know where you are at with them. Someone will also test for other parameters for a small fee.

 

[ralph atl]

LiveRock27;760639 wrote: Nitrates and Phosphates will keep your SPS from coloring up. Take a sample to your local fish store and have them test your water. Most will do the basic tests for free which include Nitrates, so at least you will know where you are at with them. Someone will also test for other parameters for a small fee.

:up:

 

[thesilence87]

I have one of the dimmable member modified LED's 13" above the water centered over the tank with everything slowly acclimating to it, it's at about 70% right now.

The frag is about halfway down from the surface of the tank, in the center. The tank is a 40 breeder.

 

[thesilence87]

I can do that.

I've got both sets on one timer right now, 10:45am - 9:45pm as of two days ago when I tacked on an extra half an hour.

I've always been curious, what's the advantage of running just the actinic and not both the whites and the blues at the same time?