so what is going on with my corals?

[tucker]

alright,

i have a few corals that are doing some different things in my tank, mostly turning brown or white...

i have 2 250w mh's that i run for about 8 hrs a day. other than that, i just have the blue leds on.

i have a big brain coral that is turning white on one side. i think he was brown at first but i cant remember. its an open brain, with green centers... hes pretty up high in the tank, a lil past halfway.

i have a smaller maze brain thats real tall in the tank. he was real green before but now hes turning brown. spots of brown all over him..

i also have a green akro looking thing that looks like the tips may be turning brown...

i dose fiji gold calc supp twice a week.

im getting real good growth on my live rock(most started off white-now its purple/green) and my mushroom, bubble coral, etc etc all look great.

is this over/under exposure to the lighting? should i move the brains lower?

[gjuarez]

Corals especially acros brown out when there is an excess of nutrients. They also tend to lighten up when a tank is extrememly too clean and have high light. What do your phosphate and nitrate levels read?

[matt]

Could be alot of things; please post more info...what size tank, what kind of filtration, what bulbs are you running, etc...

[Thunderkat]

Why is your live rock turning green? Is it from cyano or coralline?

[GaryP]

Also what is your calcium and alkalinity levels. Rule of thumb for any supplement, if you dose it, test for it.

Open brains usually don't do well if they are sitting on rock. They need to be sitting on sand at the bottom. Are we talking about a Trachyphyllia, Wellsophyllia, or another of the "open brains?" Maze brains can be a challenge depending on what species they are. Platogyra have a fairly low surival rate in a reef tank. There are other members of the Favia family that are commonly called "Maze brains" that do much better.

[hobogato]

isn't this a newly set up tank? your tank is still finishing its cycling. you may be getting cyano and other nuisance algae because of phosphates if you didnt use RO/DI water.

when brain corals turn white, that sometimes means too much light and it sometimes means not enough. if it is turning white in the spot where it gets the most light, move it down, away from the light. if it is turning white all over, then it probably not getting enough light to sustain its hosted algae (xoxanthelli - sp?), so if you move it into more light, it should color back up.

the maze brain - it may just be changing color, i have had them do that, but if the tissue is getting mushy in those brown spots, it sounds like brown jelly disease, which i believe is a bacterial infection that spreads after some sort of injury - maybe a rock fell on it or something.

the acro may be browning out as a response to being moved into your tank. if it still has polyps out and the tissue isn't sloughing off, i would leave it alone and give it time to color up.

[Marlin]

What Gary said. I had a similar problem, turned out my Alk was too high and Ca and Mg were too low. After getting these parameters back where they should be, I immediatley saw an improvement in all my corals.

Also check your water temperature, especially after your lights have been on for a couple of hours. High temperature can cause the corals to bleach and recede. I had this happen when my fans failed to come on. Luckily I caught it before everything died and eventually everything came back.

[GaryP]

Good point on the temp. Especially this time of year. Let me try to recap here. Here are a list of possible issues that could be resulting in your problems:

Too much light, tank cycling, temperature, incorrect placement of coral, non-hardy species of coral, calcium, alkalinity, bacterial infection. Simple, huh? Just try to start eliminating the ones that are obviously not factors and you will quickly narrow it down to one or two possibilities.