What causes/creates the color in coral?

theplatypus

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THis should be fun.

If you answer with zooxanthellae be prepared to explain why all corals aren't brown or yellowish brown.
 
LOL... It is not the zooxanthellae as far as I understand it. While that has a bit to do with it in most corals. It is a natural reaction to light, like you getting a suntan to protect yourself, the coral tans to protect itself. They just happen to tan really cool colors!
 
i got the best answer they get cool colors to pick up hot corals. loll. or just because they feel like it. loll.

i dont know what does but i just had the sudden urge to post that.
 
I can answer this in six quick reads:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/11/aafeature2/view">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/11/aafeature2/view</a>
[IMG]http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/11/aafeature2/view">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/11/aafeature2/view</a>
[IMG]http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/12/aafeature2/view">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/12/aafeature2/view</a>
[IMG]http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/2/aafeature">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/2/aafeature</a>
[IMG]http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/6/aafeature2">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/6/aafeature2</a>
[IMG]http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/7/aafeature1">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/7/aafeature1</a>

My favorite is the last one toward the bottom... coral dyes.
 
Oh, let me know when your eyes roll into the back of your head from reading these.
 
leveldrummer;63722 wrote: how about a discussion? not a link to people who know, i learn better from talking to people, and just because you find that and link it, doesnt mean you know yourself, some stuff is hard to grasp, and even harder to put in lamens terms. (not calling you out, or saying you dont know, just trying to encourage actual discussion on the subject.)

That was my intent when I started the thread. Figured it would be a nice change of pace to the bickering that ya'll have grown accustomed to around here. Sadly it appears that the latest crop of members are only interested in thread crapping and cheap livestock/dry goods.
 
While I have no advice I would love to see this thread grow as I think this is something everyone would be interested in. All of my corals seem to grow well but the coral isnt great like they once were. Ive been contributing a lot of it to my lighting (too yellow) but Im sure there are lots of other factors.
 
Man, I feel like we just talked about this in a post a few days ago--someone asking about why their coral always turns brown in their tank. Can someone dig up the link?
 
Well I am not trying to call anyone out, but I tried to start this discussion in another thread a couple days ago. As nobody discussed it there or then I simply short cutted the conversation here and posted the most in depth research on the subject I have ever seen. First time I have received criticism for posting informative links on the forums especially ones that are a comprehensive review of the exact subject material people are asking to discuss.

Anyway, I will repaste my reply from the thread I posted a couple days ago...

The usual answer is blast them with more light and more flow. Which IMO is correct with some caveats. First, you really can't have too much flow in an SPS tank. Corals need flow to breath, They can't swim closer to the surface nor do the have muscles to force water around them to move so you have to do it for them. Second, lighting. This is a hugely debated topic among reef keepers for a variety of reasons. The things we tend to agree on is the more PAR the better, Kelvin seems to effect our eyes more than the coloration of a coral as the same coral under a 5500k light is could look more brown than the exact same coral under a 20k light (more on this later). Lastly keeping the water at favorable parameters has a lot to do with it. Alk and Calc allow the coral to grow and sustain its life while pH is important for calcification. The exact relationship between these parameters isn't as important but keeping them inline and IMO more importantly consistent does seem to have a huge effect on corals themselves. As side note to this is keeping your water clear. The clearer your water, the better the PAR you are going to get as all those little particles floating in a tank do cause a drop in PAR and sometimes substantial. This also goes for cleaning the glass and bulbs frequently. You must be careful when cleaning the bulbs, but remove salt creep and the like from anything between the bulb and the water surface.

OK now that my basics are over with, now comes the controversial part and some I would love to discuss/argue with people just to get their thoughts.
Feeding. Corals get most of their energy from light. This allows them to grow, color, etc. However, additional energy comes from the food they intake. This gives them more energy for their to process. Some people target feed zooplankton, some blast the tank for hours with a coctail of food and others simple feed the heck out of their fish and let the poop do the talking. All seem to work. Which one works best is debatable and most likely depends on the individual coral.

Nitrates. This is a balancing act. Corals are really plants and they like to eat. Nitrates indicate how many organics are in the water column. So it makes sense to some degree that a small amount of nitrates is good for corals. In my experience and reading from other reefers, increasing the nitrates seems to actually work well for corals. That said higher nitrates causes other problems including annoying algae. IMO the best scenario is to run the tank with low nitrates for a day or two and then zero the rest of the week. However implementing that is difficult to say the least.

Kelvin. This is hot topic. To me, Kelvin firstly changes the way you see a coral. The more you go towards the 20k mark the bluer the bulb and the more some colors pop. I find the more you move toward the 20k bulb the more purple some corals appear. This is more your eyes than the corals coloration chaning. The problem with moving toward the 20k away from 5500k is that it looks great to you, but for energy purposes the coral gets more usable energy from 5500k. So the closer to 5500k you get the faster the corals tend to grow as the PAR rises. However, this leads me to probably one of the more controversial items... growth.

Speed of growth tends to effect a corals color. From reading and watching my own tank, the faster a coral grows the more brown it tends to become. Before you hit the reply button and complain about that statement hear me out. Good growth often is an indicator that all the params in the tank are spot on and in most tanks growth and coloration go hand in hand. I believe many reefers just assume that since they have good color and good growth that the two are linked in a positive way only. I think that corals that are growing very fast tend to actually loose color as it requires less energy to maintain the brown color than any other color. The faster a coral grows the more energy it needs for that growth. So the main body tends to become more dull as the tips grow faster. This is why I think when people shift to 20k bulbs away from lower kelvin bulbs not only do their eyes see a different color, but the color of the coral changes as well over a period of time since it has less PAR it is growing at a slower rate which I believe enhances the overall color. This is all IMO and I am happy to admit I could be very wrong here so let the SPS experts chime in.

UV is one of the bigger causes of coloration in the wild. Simply put, coloration is often sun screen for a coral. It shifts color to protect itself from too much harmful radiation. Hit some corals with more UV and you will find they will color up nicely. Actinic which a lot of people here will tell you is strictly for you eyes and doesn't effect the corals is possibly wrong. I think some powerful actinic lighting actually causes corals to flouresce more. MH lighting often provides this function, but hitting your corals with more of this dedicated spectrum can cause certain corals to almost glow even after the lights get turned off.

Food/protiens are the hot new way to color up your corals... or at least they will be soon enough. The interaction of proteins, corals and lighting is where a lot of researchers are beginning to focus their attention. It seems that some proteins actually shift the color of a coral. So some SPS farmers and researches are trying to develop compounds and general food products to unlock this part of coral coloration. I have a ton of reading to do on the subject still so I won't comment on the specifics, but watch for commercial and other endeavors in the short term future that are basically an additive that colors your corals.

Dyes... yep dying your coral. This seems strange, but there is some evidence that the coral skeleton when it calcifies can be shifted away from white. If true and it works we may find corals that are far more brilliant. So far I have only heard of some SPS farmers working it out, but I have been told that it is almost perfected by some. Again, don't know the specifics but find it fascinating.

More to follow a bit later...

Ultimately each coral seems to have its own wants and needs. On a fundamental level they are all the same, but once you move past the basics corals tend to color up better in different circumstances. One green slimer in my tank can simply react differently than another green slimer from a different mother colony in the same tank. However, generally speaking if you hit them with good water params, lots of light and plenty of flow they will respond with growth and color.
 
Well I'll break down the articles as simply as I can not wasting much time. Corals have pigments. Those pigments reflect certain colors or light. Over time/in different environments those multiple pigments can vary the color with their mixture.

As to brown or darkness that is usually explained by an increase in zooxanthellae which could be due to a loack of light, excess nutrients, etc. If you provide low nutrient good water conditons with good light and flow a coral will usually be the color it's "supposed to be" within a short amount of time. Now some corals are just brown (and in fact this is confirmed when you dive lots of boring browns and greens out there) but other turn brilliantly when you take them from a high nutrient or flow or light deprived environment into one closer to natural conditions!

Of course Cameron gets a great post in right before mine! I agree with most of that. and especially totally agree with the last little paragraph there!
 
My apologies I missed the previous thread. THey;re great links, but how many people will actually read them? How many people read through there to find that temp can/will affect color? How many people read through there to find out that they aren't just "pigments"? That these "pigments" include things like Cyanobacteria living in a symbiotic relationship? Did you ever think that in the ongoing quest to create the optimum growing conditions for the coral you might have created a suboptimal condition for the symbiant that gives the coral it's color?
Again it was an attempt on my part to get away from the bs that has become so prevalent within the ARC.
 
Yah I missed that previous thread as well... helluva a lil treatise and a fairly good synopsis on major issues. + belated rep to cameron.
 
Any one of several dozen different factors... from pH, temp, food, lighting and even flow. I would put my money on lighting most of the time and probably kelvin having something to do with it. Likely the coral didn't shift as much as your perception of the color of the coral.
 
How bout one for jesse for pointing it out? How come nobody gives me rep points? boo hoooo hooooo. seriously, though.
 
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