Too many of my corals look drab & lifeless - need ideas and help!

[s_tempest]

I appreciate all the suggestions and encouragement. It’s nice to hear you think the corals don’t look bad. It’s that anxious voice in your head: “why are they paler? Why don’t I see polyps? What is wrong?”
I‘m also glad that the suggestions are things that are already on my mind.
I‘m leaning towards a cause of either of two things: too much light or metals. But I am definitely open to other ideas & suggestions. I am going to cut back my lights to give everything a break for now, and wait on those icp results to inform how I next proceed.
fwiw I have started using Brightwell CoralAmino (begun at three weeks ago). I also added an order of pods and phyto then (my SIL went to AlgaeBarn for my Christmas present). I’ll look into trace elements but not do anything until the icp results.
feel free to get me other ideas

 

[s_tempest]

Here’s a better photo of that lobo from this morning. It is full and fleshy, just dull.

and here is what I mean by the pavona is pale and not ”furry”

 

[Saltyreef]

I’ve tried to get a sense of what most consider too high or too low, and compare my water with that. I’d like to see my NO3 a bit lower, but plenty of people say 10-15 is fine.
But I’m not sure what you mean by balance - please explain.

Meaning phosphate being too low in relation to nitrate.
My reef has always ran with slightly elevated phosphate and no nitrate just fine but with less desirable coloration on some things.
When i jumped on the "i need nutrients for better coloration" bus, i did not know things had to be kept in a balance so to speak.
I dosed potassium nitrate in thinking my phosphates are elevated already so i need anywhere from 8-10ppm nitrate which was the recommended range ive been seeing everywhere.
It wasnt until a couple months after my coral started showing random meltings and deaths did i finally read some posts in regards to a needed ratio between the two. I began to slowly dose potassium phosphate to raise phosphate and things are starting to look better.
When i first dosed nitrate and started seeing deaths, i was trying everything else, dips, iodine supplement, aminos........
Things got worse.
For the first time in months, after dosing phosphate to get it at a 1:10 ratio to nitrate, things are finally looking better.
Not to mention with my nitrates at 10 and phosphates at .02 gave me a minor case of Dinos that im currently treating with UV and increasing phosphate. So far so good.

 

[s_tempest]

For the first time in months, after dosing phosphate to get it at a 1:10 ratio to nitrate, things are finally looking better.

Thanks for this. Interesting observation. Can you please point me to those posts?
The 10:1 ratio actually has some sense to it, but it is much lower than what you see for the vast majority of tanks and recommendations.
10:1 in ppm works out to 16:1 as a mole ratio. And 16:1 is that Redfield ratio of N : P in marine phytoplankton. Plankton make their biomass in a 16:1 ratio, so if your tank has NO3: PO4 much higher than that, there’s going to be NO3 left over that can’t be assimilated.
Fun fact: I never met him, but Redfield is kind of an academic grandfather of mine. My PhD advisor did a post-doc with Redfield workingon geochemistry of salt marshes on Cape Cod - that was back in the 50s so a long time ago.

 

[biophilia]

Lots of good suggestions so far and this one is a little off the wall, but one thing that might be worth noting the next time you do a water change is a side-by-side comparison of tank water vs freshly-mixed saltwater. I’ve noticed a similar dulling and lack of PE on corals in the past when water gets a little too yellow (Eg excess dissolved organic compounds) causing what seems to be irritation to the coral. I’ve had it resolve by upping the amount and frequency of GAC changes until old water is relatively close in color to the freshly-mixed stuff.

 

[Saltyreef]

Thanks for this. Interesting observation. Can you please point me to those posts?
The 10:1 ratio actually has some sense to it, but it is much lower than what you see for the vast majority of tanks and recommendations.
10:1 in ppm works out to 16:1 as a mole ratio. And 16:1 is that Redfield ratio of N : P in marine phytoplankton. Plankton make their biomass in a 16:1 ratio, so if your tank has NO3: PO4 much higher than that, there’s going to be NO3 left over that can’t be assimilated.
Fun fact: I never met him, but Redfield is kind of an academic grandfather of mine. My PhD advisor did a post-doc with Redfield workingon geochemistry of salt marshes on Cape Cod - that was back in the 50s so a long time ago.

Here is the thread that got me thinking.

Optimal phosphate level? (Mixed Reef)

What should a good phosphate level be for a mixed reef be (SPS,LPS,&softies)? My phosphate levels were around a 0.15ppm and I was told that was to low so I brought it up to a 0.30ppm but I think that’s to high. What should it be around?

www.reef2reef.com

And these posts specifically.
After experiencing first hand, the ill effects of high nitrate in relation to phosphate, it makes sense.

 

[s_tempest]

For anyone following this (or for future forum searchers) I have some updates.

Firstly, I got my ICP results.
mini-review: I used ATI Labs. I liked that they would also analyze my RODI water (but as of now, those RODI results are not yet available on their site ) so I only have my tank water. I dropped the samples off at my local post office on Jan 7, and they got to the US address in Gardena CA on Jan 11. USPS tracking number is provided with the sample package, so I could easily see that it somehow took 3 whole days to get from my little town in CT to the Springfield MA distribution center (!), but then only one more day to get to Gardena.
Email from ATI arrived today telling me my results were available, and the login and viewing of results are very easy. It is somewhat opaque to me why some element's large differences are acceptable (green checkmark, meaning "near-natural range and that it is well tolerated by the various reef organisms") while other smaller differences get red or pink arrows and action is recommended.
results: In short, almost nothing is outside bounds. On the brightside, I don't have some massive contamination in my RODI and tank setup. And, I get some comparison of my own tests with their results. They have my salinity as 33.18 psu (1.025sg) while I was measuring 1.026 (35 psu). I measured alk of 8.2°dKH on the day I sampled, while they returned 7.9 °dKH. I measured [Ca] of 450 ppm, and they returned 481. My measured PO4 was 0.018 ppm and they returned 0.03, and my measured NO3 was 16 ppm and they returned 26.7. That nitrate is a bit high so now I have something I can work on. A few metals came back high: Al (1.83 ppb), Fe (8.28 ppb), Cu (4.6 ppb) but these are all within tolerable limits. Ba, I and Si were also high but within tolerable limits. The only thing low beyond tolerable limits is Fluorine (0.25 ppm, while ideal is ~5x that).
So I'd say there is no action I need to take to adjust or remedy the chemistry of my tank (NO3 aside). There goes the hopes of an easy fix .

 

[s_tempest]

I think the next think I will tackle is my lighting. Even though the PAR measurements seemed good for the corals I have and where I was placing them, my own observation and many of the comments here are saying: "Faded, drab, gray - too much light?"
Maybe the 100% for UV, V, RY & B (10% G, R, CW) was too much or too long. I ran this for 8 hours/day plus a two-hour ramp up and long, blue-heavy ramp down in the evening.
I'm cutting back the blues to 70%, green and white to 5%. I actually started this cut-back one week ago. No obvious changes yet except my torch, hammers and elegance are extending more. Still no PE (day or night) and the corals that seem drab are not changed.

Question for those with more experience: if I had been giving my corals too much light, and cutting back provides a solution, how long should it be until there is a real change? I ask not because I need instant gratification. I just need to get a sense of when do you know your fix is making a positive change, and when do you decide that your fix does nothing and you need to try something else?

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

It's so hard to know what to do. I upped the intensity of my hydras to a higher setting than the one you are running.
Certain acros have definitely improved and look a lot better but others have really struggling. The one acro that I really want to do well, a Strawberry Shortcake, has pretty much lost all its color.
But at the same time I stopped dosing vibrant and did several water changes.
It is difficult to know what is making a difference and what isn't.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Thanks for this. Interesting observation. Can you please point me to those posts?
The 10:1 ratio actually has some sense to it, but it is much lower than what you see for the vast majority of tanks and recommendations.
10:1 in ppm works out to 16:1 as a mole ratio. And 16:1 is that Redfield ratio of N : P in marine phytoplankton. Plankton make their biomass in a 16:1 ratio, so if your tank has NO3: PO4 much higher than that, there’s going to be NO3 left over that can’t be assimilated.
Fun fact: I never met him, but Redfield is kind of an academic grandfather of mine. My PhD advisor did a post-doc with Redfield workingon geochemistry of salt marshes on Cape Cod - that was back in the 50s so a long time ago.

"I do not think a Redfield ratio of nutrients is an appropriate way to decide on desirable levels. It truly makes zero sense to me. Both nitrate and phosphate should be independently targeted to a desirable level. If one or the other is unusually high or low, does that mean the other should be? In my opinion, certainly not."

Randy Holmes-Farley

 

[s_tempest]

"I do not think a Redfield ratio of nutrients is an appropriate way to decide on desirable levels. It truly makes zero sense to me. Both nitrate and phosphate should be independently targeted to a desirable level. If one or the other is unusually high or low, does that mean the other should be? In my opinion, certainly not."

Randy Holmes-Farley

ugh ...I really don’t want to get sucked into an online argument about this. I don’t have the years in reefing to have much credence in this community. But I have a few decades in the biogeochemistry field, and I know there is a good literature on nutrient ratios in the natural world. Deutsch & Weber (2012) in Annual Reviews of Marine Science gives a pretty good recent summary. I can’t answer if organisms (corals) grow better at 16:1, but I know that most of the ocean is near this ratio.
My two cents on this: above some high concentrations, any ratio won’t matter because you’ve hit some inhibitory concentration of one thing or another. At very low concentrations, organisms are barely able too keep up with maintenance let alone growth. And in the middle range, stoichiometry matters because organisms and their bio molecules are made in fixed ratios of element.

 

[Saltyreef]

I think the next think I will tackle is my lighting. Even though the PAR measurements seemed good for the corals I have and where I was placing them, my own observation and many of the comments here are saying: "Faded, drab, gray - too much light?"
Maybe the 100% for UV, V, RY & B (10% G, R, CW) was too much or too long. I ran this for 8 hours/day plus a two-hour ramp up and long, blue-heavy ramp down in the evening.
I'm cutting back the blues to 70%, green and white to 5%. I actually started this cut-back one week ago. No obvious changes yet except my torch, hammers and elegance are extending more. Still no PE (day or night) and the corals that seem drab are not changed.

Question for those with more experience: if I had been giving my corals too much light, and cutting back provides a solution, how long should it be until there is a real change? I ask not because I need instant gratification. I just need to get a sense of when do you know your fix is making a positive change, and when do you decide that your fix does nothing and you need to try something else?

Have you looked into par vs pur settings and trying to dial them in accordingly?
I like the color spectragraph. Theres a few posts of the specific settings some users have tried to dial in.

If i make a change in color and intensity, or as i have in the past changed fixtures, ill use coral acclaimation mode for 1 month at a 25-50% reduction. At the end of 1 month it should be at full power with the program.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

ugh ...I really don’t want to get sucked into an online argument about this. I don’t have the years in reefing to have much credence in this community. But I have a few decades in the biogeochemistry field, and I know there is a good literature on nutrient ratios in the natural world. Deutsch & Weber (2012) in Annual Reviews of Marine Science gives a pretty good recent summary. I can’t answer if organisms (corals) grow better at 16:1, but I know that most of the ocean is near this ratio.
My two cents on this: above some high concentrations, any ratio won’t matter because you’ve hit some inhibitory concentration of one thing or another. At very low concentrations, organisms are barely able too keep up with maintenance let alone growth. And in the middle range, stoichiometry matters because organisms and their bio molecules are made in fixed ratios of element.

ugh ... I saw your "need ideas and help!" in your title, that's why I responded with a quote from Randy.
I could add more specifics into what I was getting at, but I think I'll just mosey along instead.

 

[s_tempest]

ugh ... I saw your "need ideas and help!" in your title, that's why I responded with a quote from Randy.
I could add more specifics into what I was getting at, but I think I'll just mosey along instead.

No, wait! Don’t mosey! I want to learn more about this. When I say I can’t answer if organisms grow better at some ratio, I mean that literally. I don’t know. I don’t want to get into argument because I am not an expert in coral physiology. I always have something to learn.

 

[teller]

For anyone following this (or for future forum searchers) I have some updates.

Firstly, I got my ICP results.
mini-review: I used ATI Labs. I liked that they would also analyze my RODI water (but as of now, those RODI results are not yet available on their site ) so I only have my tank water. I dropped the samples off at my local post office on Jan 7, and they got to the US address in Gardena CA on Jan 11. USPS tracking number is provided with the sample package, so I could easily see that it somehow took 3 whole days to get from my little town in CT to the Springfield MA distribution center (!), but then only one more day to get to Gardena.
Email from ATI arrived today telling me my results were available, and the login and viewing of results are very easy. It is somewhat opaque to me why some element's large differences are acceptable (green checkmark, meaning "near-natural range and that it is well tolerated by the various reef organisms") while other smaller differences get red or pink arrows and action is recommended.
results: In short, almost nothing is outside bounds. On the brightside, I don't have some massive contamination in my RODI and tank setup. And, I get some comparison of my own tests with their results. They have my salinity as 33.18 psu (1.025sg) while I was measuring 1.026 (35 psu). I measured alk of 8.2°dKH on the day I sampled, while they returned 7.9 °dKH. I measured [Ca] of 450 ppm, and they returned 481. My measured PO4 was 0.018 ppm and they returned 0.03, and my measured NO3 was 16 ppm and they returned 26.7. That nitrate is a bit high so now I have something I can work on. A few metals came back high: Al (1.83 ppb), Fe (8.28 ppb), Cu (4.6 ppb) but these are all within tolerable limits. Ba, I and Si were also high but within tolerable limits. The only thing low beyond tolerable limits is Fluorine (0.25 ppm, while ideal is ~5x that).
So I'd say there is no action I need to take to adjust or remedy the chemistry of my tank (NO3 aside). There goes the hopes of an easy fix .

Just one note.
In the vast majority of ICP tests i have seen, both Fe and Cu are tested undetectable (below LOD, limit of detection by ICP equipment).
In your case you have 4.6ppb of Cu.
As far as i understand one of the impacts of copper in a reef tank is really in the coral colors. Maybe that is the reason of your paleness.