when sps don't get enough light...

[sam75]

How can you tell if sps aren't getting enough light? Will they pale, brown, simply not grow or begin to stn? Any easy what to tell?

Thanks!
-S

[cloak]

I'm still relatively new to the whole sps game, but I would think the colors would begin to look pale and then eventually brown out. You wouldn't have any growth the whole time this is happening. I'm not to sure about the STN though. I think that's more of alkalinity issue.
Somebody with more experience should chime in here soon and give you more of a definitive answer. Good luck.

[Palting]

Having had a green stylo that bleached, I've asked several questions here and also read up on it.

An sps that is underlit but otherwise has a good environment will lose color brightness ans start turning brown. It will lose the effectiveness of it's zooxanthelae, and start getting nutrients from the water instead. Obviously, if it is severly underlit, it won't survive at all, and just turn brown and die.

The green stylophora that I got was under PC's at the lfs, and had a distinctly brown skeleton and green polyps. I put it under my MH, and the brown went away. Unfortunately, so did some of the polyps, and the skeleton actually turned white. I had light shocked and bleached it. I now have it under a screen, and the polyps are slowly coming back greener than before, and the skeleton is tan colored rather than brown.

[Allmost]

its easy to understand it.

darker colors absorb more light. for example, wearing a dark(black lets say) shirt under the sun will heat u up more than if u were wearing a white or light color shirt !

so when corals dont get enough light, they turn brown to be able to use that little light more.

[sam75]

so pale colors on sps wouldn't likely be sign of too little light?

[Makenna]

Originally Posted by sam75

so pale colors on sps wouldn't likely be sign of too little light?

Assuming you can confirm that all of your parameters are correct and stable, pale coloration can many times be a result of to low of nutrients.

There is a fine line between having to many nutrients which would result in brown/green coloration and not enough nutrients resulting in pale ones.

You see this many times in ULNS with very strong oversized skimmers and is why you see many reefers with this type of system adding aminio acids or other types of supplementations. I myself had this problem in my Zeovit tank. Once the Phos and Trates got to zero, the corals paled.

Increase the feeding and add AA's, color starts to come back.

HTH

[Palting]

Originally Posted by sam75

so pale colors on sps wouldn't likely be sign of too little light?

I guess we'd have to distinguish pale coloration from bleaching. Pale colors COULD mean too little light, while bleaching usually means too much light. This is assuming the only variable is light, everything else good. Like I said, I have a recovering bleached sps, so I am just beginning to figure this out myself. If there is anyone who is an expert or who has good experience, please feel free to confirm or correct me.

[Toddrtrex]

Corals can/will bleach from both too much light and too little light -- when they "bleach" they are expelling their internal algae in an attempt to find a strain that will handle the current conditions better.

[sam75]

thanks all!