Brain Coral losing colour

Question
Hello,
Ryan Davies writing you. 10 gallon micro reef, 10 lbs of live rock, crushed coral substrate, penguin micro filter one power head, t5 lighting, sun coral, frog spwn, xenia, green zoos, blue ricordera mushroom, green metallic mushroom(3),green Lobed brain coral, emerald crab, hermit crab, cleaner shrimp, coral beauty(1.5 inch), Dotty Back, 2 turbo???snails)I have a questiion about my green lobed Brain coral and one or two other things. The brain coral was not doing to well a while ago, IO then discoverd that you have to feed the coral and I got it to do much better. I have it under power compacts or T5 lighting which I know is the lowest that is reccomended lighting. Recently I moved my tank around and since I have the brain coral seems to be still expanding, but has lost almost all of its colour. It was at the bottom of the tank(not good) but once I moved it to the middle where more flow is it started to expand again but like I said with little colour. Now the section of the coral in bright light doesnt seem to be as healthy as the side in the shade? I covered it with paper on the top of my glass and it shrunk and showed its skeleton. so i removed that and it is now expanding again. My salinity is between 1.023 and 1.025, Nitrate = .5-.10, Phosphate .25, Calcium above 400, PH is 8.1-8.3, KH is .70-.80, Nitrite is 0, Ammonia is 0- .03. Temp =75c Any inputs on how to get the colour back or why it is happening? Also I aquired a sun polyp a while back that was in bad shape.......the pet shop here really needs some help in my opinion. It was discintigrating away to slime which I removed. After having it for a week or two, it started to breed one night, I thought it let out a few eggs and tried to put them in a suitable spot. To my amazement a few weeks later, I realized that baby sun polyps are almost everywhere in the aquarium. there must be at last 300-400 in my ten gallon mini reef. is this goin to cause a problem, I have a few rocks that I plan to sell when they are big enough, but there on EVERYTHING.im not feeding the ones I dont want to survive but its not helping, Any ideas
Thanks and hope to hear back from you soon.
Regards Ryan Davies

Answer
hello Ryan.

well, sounds like you have a couple quandries...  having a sun polyp 'breed' / propogate is a good problem.. hehehe

you can trade/sell the rocks where the baby sun polyps are.. that will increase ther value... you can trade for stuff you want/like, and or dont have...

your temperature is a bit on the low side, not bad, just on the low side.. be careful it doesnt get too much cooler in there...

The brain coral is kind of tough.. they really like whatever conditions they are used to.. they dont do well with change... I would suggest keeping them in the middle, or lower... I would suggest low flow areas, as they really dont like higher flow or turbulance.  They dont usually need to be fed, but they do it... they usually grab whatver is floating in the water column, so it depends on how much you feed your tank and how often... if you are stingy, and the water is clean of food stuff, then you might have to feed corals, but my goal is to avoid work/effort whenever possible, so i would either find a way to naturally feed that coral or get a different coral

There s a difference between power compact and T5... they are both flourescent, but that is the end of the comparison... t5 are much higher power, efficient in producing lumens...

You mention you have a glass lid... glass and other things actually block light, so you are not getting al the light you are producing... try removing the glass and see what affect that has your tank and coral...

Also, i would add that not everyone can keep/grow everything... I can not keep/grow xenia in my display tank.. they just melt away...same with candycane corals..but, i can keep them in my frag tank.  I can also keep some amazing other stuff that other folks cant grow... so, it is kind of 'finicky' that way...

Just figure out what you can and cant keep and move on from there.


btw: you might want to check out my new forum at www.thelittleocean.com   We have other reefers there that will also help answer some questions, and we also have a live CHAT room so you can chat and talk with me and others in real time...

hope to see you there


bill