Correction and a maybe?

[charlesr1958]

Since the "cooking" thread was closed and I was unable to reply to a posting about my acropora and my inability to maintain other types of acropora, I felt it neccesary to make the correction here.

It was stated that my "blue" acropora tortuosa turned brown due to my tank conditions, this is incorrect, it was collected as "brown" no where on my site's page is the word "blue" even in print. PAGE IN QUESTION for those that care.

What does happen in my tank with colorfull acro and monti types is that I can not use metal halides or any other intensive light types, they do not sell them here. So I am forced to use compact flourescents, which work fine for everything, except keeping the colorations on acro and monti types that are not already brown. Those that do not do well in my tank's conditions do so for what I believe is strictly due to lack of light intensity and extremely low nutrient levels. This is the maybe? part of the subject line.

Here goes - I take a blue (insert color here) acropora out of the wild, it came from a light intensive, low nutrient area, I put it in a lower light intensive, low nutrient tank, Its first response is to create more zooanthelae to be able to gather more of what light is available, (zooanthelae are brown) but that doesnt work for the coral since those zoonathelae also require nutrients to thrive, unable to do so, the coral basicaly is left with not enough zooanthelae that it needs in lower light, but the zooanthelae do not have either the nutrients or the light intensity needed to accomodate the coral, hence the coral suffers for it. I sure hope that made some kind of sense since with low intensity and low nutrients, its the only plausible that I can come up with.

I have another acro type in my tank that was colleted 3 weeks ago with a coloration of brown with the upper 1/3rd of its branches being purple/blue, as of now, the entire coral is all brown, yet still doing good. Am starting to get an ancedotal maybe of that if a coral is basicaly brown with some coloration, it will do okay in lower light, but a coral that is entirely "colored", will not do okay. Possibly for the reason(s) I stated above...well, just an idea!!!

Chuck

[rshimek]

[moved]

This forum is more appropriate for these discussions.