Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Okay, I've only been doing this about 1 and a half years....so still pretty new to the reef culture. I have a 75 gal reef, 30 gal sump, mag 7 pump, aqua c remora in sump skimmer, T5 lights..........why do all my corals turn the same color? I bought a green finger leather, purple colt, clove coral, etc. They were all the different colors when I purchased them....now they all look the same pinkish ,orange color. Help?????

What type of T5 setup do you have. Also how many bulbs and what kind?

power compacs 65w 4 bulbs 2 actinic, 1 blue 1 purple

So do you have T5 or Power Compact? Your 1st post you say you have T5 and the next one you say power compact. Then what brand light fixture and what brand bulbs. How long ago did you change the bulbs.

It's a Power compact. I changed the bulbs 2 weeks ago.

Well I thought lighting might have something to do with it but I'm not familiar with Power Compact. I've only ever had one over a fuge and it had a 50/50 bulb. You seem to be running a lot of blue over the tank with the blue bulb, purple bulb and the actinics. Do you happen to know what K those bulbs are?

I don't mean to sound ignorant, but I don't know the wattage for the blue and purple bulbs. This Power Compact was equipped with this type of lighting when I bought it.I just changed the bulbs according to what was already in place. The actinics are 65w.

Well I had asked for K value of the bulb, which is Kelvin. Its the color output of the bulbs. With all blue/purple and actinic bulbs all i picture is a really blue tank. Those blue and purple bulbs are probably in the 14-20k range and make everything blue. I could be way off because I still don't really know what brand of bulbs and or ballast your are using and I've never used a Power Compact setup. I would think you would want to add a 10k bulb to the tank also. Thinking about it though with all of that blue/actinic I would think the coral all look or get a green color rather than orange.

Different bulb temperature (color) will bring out or develop different colors in your corals. Intensity can also be an issue. For growth, i've read 10k bulbs are best. However, the colors will usually look blah. As an example, i have 10k halide bulbs which cause a noticeable increase in growth of my hard corals. However, the colors are washed out and poor. When i used 14k bulbs, the colors were great, but growth slowed. I recently sold some "purple" digitata to someone that actually turned the bright purple it was supposed to be when moved to their tank. In my tank, only the new growth was purple. I would research more about bulbs and the color combos used to give a good balance of color and growth. Plenty of articles on line.

crsswift70 wrote:I recently sold some "purple" digitata to someone that actually turned the bright purple it was supposed to be when moved to their tank. In my tank, only the new growth was purple.

This happened to me when I switched to 15.000K bulbs, same digitada I got from you, the green birdsnest's flesh went from tan to white, making the green polyps really pop. The digitada is so bright purple it feels like my eyes won't focus on it.

I've had the peachy-washed out look on my corals when I used T5's exclusively, with the 15.000K halides that problem disappeared.

You know water quality could be her issue also but I thought lights were a good place to start. I'm still not clear of brand/bulbs she is using, and if it is PC I have no experience with them. It sounds like she has a lot of blue from the bulbs she has. I really didn't see any mention of one that would be in the 10k range. I'd expect everything to look blue with those blue bulbs though and just an ugly brownish color with lower than 10k bulbs.

As for T5, they are good but do tend to not get the same color as MH can. Some are better and some are worse. I'd love to hook up a 150w MH over my 30 for a month to see what I get. The heat would be an issue though.

Okay Boys.......enough men talk......please don't talk about me like I am not here...I asked for help....... not discussion between guys...talk to me.....If I wanted this I would have stayed married...... LOL

Well, we are.. i think it is your combination of bulbs. I think that you need t o do some reading on bulb color and the affect that has on corals. Unfortunately, unless someone has the exact same setup as you, i doubt anyone can tell you for sure which bulbs will work the best. When i had PC lights, i used one actinic and two 50/50 actinic\10k bulbs (one side looked blue, the other white). I had nice growth but not what i would call exceptional color. 10k bulbs usually look like sunlight (a little yellow), the higher the "k" value, the more crisp and blue it usually looks (14k being my favorite color choice). There are also actinic bulbs rated in nm's. These will usually look blue to purple when lit.

Thanks,Chris....buy the way....the watermelon zoas are awesome!!!!! Carol

I was just responding to the others who threw out ideas. I never got an answer for brand of ballast/bulbs or exactly what kind of bulbs other than blue/purple and actinic so its hard for me to guess anything.