SPS polyp color change

C

chrisrush

Premium Member
Anyone ever notice this? I haven't seen it personally, but I think that I remember reading about it. Not sure why this one color is doing it, but I believe that it has to do with it being a wild caught mini colony.

A little background, I bought this coral from Austin Aqua Farms back in early March. It was bright green with nice green polyps. It stayed that way until recently when I noticed on the growth tips that the polyps were starting to become bluer. I took some pictures of it and I will show the original picture, and then the progression. I have thought about fragging the tip that has the blue polyps to see if it will grow in a similar fashion.

Here is the coral around the time when I bought it.

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And here it is today. These pictures were taking under natural light with a flash with my macro lens. As you can see, the proximal polyps are bluish. This is even more evident under T5s.

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Currently I have it about 12" below my 8x24w T5 setup. It gets plenty of flow from my return and one of my tunze 6055s on pulse mode. I have a build log if you would like to see more about my tank. Currently, I am running my params at 8-10 dKH, 450-500 ppm Ca and 1500+ Mg.

I will take some more pictures as my lights turn on.

Chris
 
Some of my SPS have changed a lot under my T5's. I had a blue tort that I got from a member that was solid blue under halides and over the past 3 months it exposed a bunch of cream color and looks similar to a tenius. :?
 
@blide wrote:
Some of my SPS have changed a lot under my T5's. I had a blue tort that I got from a member that was solid blue under halides and over the past 3 months it exposed a bunch of cream color and looks similar to a tenius. :? said:
Hmm, that definitely sucks. Luckily, this is a good change. Should be interesting if half the coral has blue polyps and the other half has green.

I do agree that the T5s change the color of most SPS corals. I'll post some more pictures on my build thread later today.
Click to expand...
 
Makes me wonder if there are certain strains of zooxanthellae that are hardier than others, or do they change the proteins they produce, which affects coloration. It's not _just_ the zooxanthellae that are responsible for color, but also their placement in regards to the coral's pigmentation cells (in front of or behind) as well.

Additionally, I wonder if there's a correlation to a particular bulb.. zooxanthellae reflect a lot of reds and yellows, while coral pigments are usualy in the blue / green range. So light choice would also highlight either the zooxanthellae (lower K) or the coral pigments (higher K).
 
@Ashlar wrote:
Makes me wonder if there are certain strains of zooxanthellae that are hardier than others said:
Yes in my opinion... you notice color shifts when changing bulbs and when moving corals from one tank to another.
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i was wondering if temp had anything to do with this
it seems we have 2 post of sps colors changing
and wow has is started to get hot
 
I know that color bleaching due to heat makes the coral release the zooxanthellae, but I wonder what happens to the pigment cells that the coral has.
 
I was looking over this coral again last night, and it appears that one of the new spikes from the base has the blue polyps. I'm going to frag that bit off and see if will encourage new polyp growth with a blue color instead of green color.

Someone on RC mentioned that monti's do this (think pokerstar) but I don't remember reading about any acros.
 
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