Hi everyone,

Before I tell about my problem I would like to say thank you in advance. I have learned so much from this site and from the podcasts and I really enjoy all the help and advice from people who have been doing this much longer than I have.

Well here it goes.......

My pokerstar monti seems to be loosing its color. he is now a light light blue with brown polyps. The LFS I got him from told me to put him high in my tank because he needed a lot of light and so I did and I also bought two little fishies bioplankton coral food from the LFS because he said that is what he feeds them.

Now my tank is a biocube 29 with a 70w ushio MH 10k and two 36w actinics. All water params are at 0 alk is at 9dkh and calc at 480mg/L. I have two hydor koralia #1 powerheads for flow and my temp stay steady at 78 - 81F.

What can I do to help my poor pokerstar? Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you again.

How long has the tank been set up? How long have you had the pokerstar? What else is in your tank? Are you dosing anything? How often do you do water changes? Don't you love it when your question gets answered with questions?

Well I do water changes every saturday and test the water quality daily. The tank has been set up for almost 8 weeks now. I am not dosing with anything yet but if I should be it will start tommorow :). I have had the pokerstar for about 2 weeks now.

Thank you for responding,

Daniel

the lighting change from the LFS to your tank could have caused the change. putting the coral directly under high light may have stressed it espically if the LFS had dimmer lighting.

The LFS had it high in a frag tank with two 250w MH at 14k. So maybe it is the opposite and got stressed due to me not having as strong a light as the LFS?

What you are supposing about the lighting difference is probably true. Can you post a picture?

It could just be adjusting to the change in lighting. As Dick said a picture will help. I just wanted to make sure you were not dosing. I don't see anything the matter with your water so there is not a reason to start. But a lot of times folks are sold stuff they really don't need and don't or can't test for. I do feed my corals Cyclopeeze and oyster eggs but a lot of people don't feed corals.

If that is true is there anyway to save my pokerstar? here is a picture, my camera is really not the best so i got a decent close up of the monti, and added a FTS just for fun. Thank you in advance.

Well it is not bleached so I think there is still hope. Is that where it has always been placed?

my guess is that it is just adjusting to the new light. It may become a brownie, that would be sad. Hopefully with time the color will come back. If the lfs had it high in the tank and you placed it low in your tank I am pretty sure it is getting alot less light. You can always leave it there and c what happens, if it doesnt color up move it up after 2 or so weeks. Dont move it all the way to the top though. If you move it half way closer to the MH it will double the amount of light hitting it, not just giving it about half more. So move it up slow if needed.

I placed it lower about two days ago, from some advice that i had recieved from another LFS that said it may be because my MH light is so close to the water and that having it so high may be burning it. Although if that is bad advice i can move it back although that is where it had been the majority of the time it has been in my tank. So I can start moving it up slowly today. Is there anything else that I can do for it? any thing that might help it from becoming a "brownie"?

OK, give it a minute and don't panic here. :fire: Have you seen any change for either the better or worse since you moved it?

No not really. Although it is kinda hard to tell.... the polyps seem to have more definition but still definately brown and the base seems to still be a real pale blue color. Which doesnt seem to be much different than the last few days when i moved him.

Sorry for sounding like I have my hair on fire :) but I am just a little worried as I dont want to kill him. I also would very much like his color to return. Thanks for all your help so far I do really appreciate it.

I would probably let it where you have it for a few days and see how it goes. IMO it is hard on corals if you keep moving them from place to place. Lighting does make a difference. I have a fungia and under my PC's it was brown. When I got my Solaris it turned lime green with teal highlights.

Ok so I will see how it goes with his current location. Could it be that I dont have enough light? I might be able to do something about that if I need to since the tank is still in its early stages. Let me know what everyone thinks. Thanks in advance.

even if it does brown out that is better than bleaching. Your lighting should be fine. the coral probably just panicked a bit. How did you acclimate the coral to your tank? drip method?

No :( The LFS said that floating the bag in the tank till the temps were the same then adding a little tank water in the bag about 4 times over about a half an hour would be sufficient. Then place it high in the tank since i only have a 70w MH and two 36 CF actinic lights.

Is there any way after a coral "browns out" to get the color to return?

correct care/lighting can bring the color back usually, don't get discouraged. It didn't bleach so it will probably live

Thats good news :) Thank you. So you the lighting that I have currently should be good for him correct? as far as care you mean staying ontop of my water params. As for feeding I have been using two little fishies bioplankton, should I feed them anything else?

the lighting should be just fine IMO and as long as params are good you should be fine. Any plankton based food is fine.

Ok thank you for all your help. My next question is what method have you and other found to be successful for feeding your corals? The LFS I bought the pokerstar from said to just add a few drops daily into the water. Since I have moved the pokerstar to the bottom part of the tank and I also have a green acropora and a small colony of zoo's. I was wondering if there is a better way that I should be feeding them.

As of now I turn the pumps off when i feed my corals and add 3 drops of the two little fishes zooplankton "goo" and then leave the pumps off for a few minutes and then turn them back on. I was thinking that there might be a better way to ensure they are getting the proper food. I dont know what that is, or maybe I just dont really understand how they do eat.

Sorry if this is a very bad question I just want to make sure I do as much right as I can for my tank so that I can successfully keep corals and soon fishes too. Thanks again for all your help.

Also I have just realized that I was not using the two little fishies food I am using:

Reef Nutrition Roti-Feast

I dont know why I thought i was using something different. This is what the LFS told me to get when i purchased the pokerstar. Please let me know if I should be feeding corals something different.

When I feed my 54 I turn the return pump off for an hour or so (to keep the food from getting skimmed out right away) but I let the internal circulation on so the food is carried by the corals and they are able to catch it. I don't have a skimmer in my nano so I just let the return on when I feed that tank.

The Roti-Feast is a fine food.

leave your hydros on and turn the main off for an hour/half hour or so. the hydors will keep the food in suspension a bit longer so the corals can eat more.

Thank you for all your help so far. Hope I was not too much of a pain. So today I was checking in on my pokerstar monti and it looks as if he may be getting a little more blue, but the good news (well I hope it is good news it seemed like an improvement) the polyps on him were a lighter shade of brown(not so much a lighter shade as a different shade) and looked a lot more defined than it had in the last week or so.

Sorry if that made no sense it is really kind of hard for me to explain. I will try and get a picture tommorow.

glad that it seems to be looking better

^^What he said!^^

Thanks I hope that he keeps improving :) Thanks again for all your wisdom :)

Well here is what he looks today. It seems to have a better blueish color on the base but his pollups are still brown. Should I leave him as low as he is in the tank or try and move him higher?

Does it have good pollup extension? If it does i wouldnt worry about it

Its hard to tell as the polyps are pretty small. They seem to be doing well just still brown :(

If the color on the base is improving I think I would leave him where he is for now.

ok I will leave him alone.....I am new to all this so I just want to do anything i can to have a successful reef tank.

So just an update on my pokerstar I installed the 150w MH light and since I did that about 2 weeks ago, I can already see new growth in all directions and the base is very blue. It looks much much better with great polyp extension. Although the polyps are still a reddish brown. Do you think that eventually the polyps will turn green again? maybe after I get a 20k bulb? Just wondering...

How was it when you first got it? Some wild colonies just never color up the way the "original" does.

the polyps will probably go back to green under the bluer bulb.

HOW DID I MISS THIS THREAD ??!!

when i first got it it had a very deep blue base and bright green polyps, now the base has returned to the deep blue color like when i originally bought it. Now the only differrence is that the polyps are more of a brownish red color, which is a very pretty contrast but looks more like a superman montipora than the pokerstar. :)

And Bobby I dont know how you missed this thread either..I just figured I would ressurect it and hope you would find it this time...Any additional advice? I bought that coralvue reeflux 10k 150w MH bulb and love it thank you for that.

glad you like the bulb !! are you running any actinics ?? i kept mine around mid way up n my tank and it looked great. i would just be sure that it is recovered and move it around the tank, little by little, leaving it in the same spot for a couple of weeks, and see where the polyps turn back to green. then you will know it likes where it is, it takes a while, but well worth the hassle.

Ok thank you, I was listening to the podcast today on my way to work with your rant on impulse buys and this coral was my first impulse buy. I know and I will try not to be so impulsive in the future and I havent been yet. It was so pretty though at the LFS, that I just had to get it. But I have been trying to do as much research as possible since then...I know that is backwards :)

Anyway. Yes I am using actinics I am using the 2 stock 36w compact florescent that came with the Biocube with all actinic bulbs. Although they dont seem to be too powerful and the blue actinic seems to get lost in the power of the 150w MH. I was looking into putting T5 actinic bulbs into the hood, since I have to keep the hood on for now with my little one walking around. But I dont think that they come short enough. So I think I will get my coral frags to grow and then when I have to change the MH maybe go with a 20k to improve the colors. I have my pokerstar about half way up now. But maybe next week I will start moving him around see if I cant get the polyps to be green again.

do you know if the stock bulbs are 420nm or 460nm ?? if they are 402nm i would suggest going with 460nm, they are way more blue than the 420s are ... before switching to 20k. i would rather see a good 12k reeflux with 460 actinics, but thats just my opinion. the reefluxs are excellent bulbs and the only ones that are a TRUE full spectrum bulb (from what i have read and been told BY CORALVUE).

I believe that they are 420nm actinics. I dont think i have seen any 460nm....but then again I havent been looking. That sounds like a good option. Im not planning on changing my lights for a long while hopefully anyway. In the last 4 months or so I have bought everything for the 70w MH I had and now the 150w MH and done all the work on my little biocube hood. So for now I am all lighted out. But I will keep my eye open for the 460nm CF bulbs. And when I find then that would be an easy switch and I could keep the 10k MH. I like the color as it is now, just want to all I can for the coral color.

Hey, it's great to hear that it is making a full recovery!

Thanks Carmie :) I am really happy with it I can see new growth almost everyday!!! Just hope I can get the polyps to go back to the green color they were originally.