Birdsnest Seriatopora - what is happening?

[Anonymous]

As I said, it was a teeny weeny frag when I got it so it could well be misidentified.

Don't matter, I like it regardless .

 

[mirkus]

having problems posting picture so here


before and after

 

[Anonymous]

All you can do is keep an eye on it...

 

[DK]

Hey, its turning pink!!! Seriously, it looks fine. Enjoy.

 

[mirkus]

I thought I would post an update almost two months later. Anyway the Birdsnest is still very very light (pretty dang close to white). It's only color is really the polyps.

I moved the coral down to the sand as suggested months ago.

Pics to come, I'll take some when I get home. What is wrong with this thing?

Water parameters seem okay too.

 

[Unarce]

I had a similar incident earlier this year with my Seriatopora guttatus. The 1/2" frag started out neon green in January, than shortly turned white. After several months, it became neon green again in May. It's now a 4" colony, but has really stunted the growth of my blue gomezi :x .

 

[Ben1]

Birds nest come in brown green pink and blue, FWIW.

 

[Ben1]

Lawdawg I do think you have a Pocillopora.

 

[SnowManSnow]

I bought a bird's nest coral about that size some 6mos ago. It went through the same process (for good or bad)...but is fine now..I actually had only ONE side (the side facing UP towards the light) that bleached out like that leading me to believe it was the strong lighting. Mine was shipped on a nice plug so I simply rotated it every week or so to tan the other side.. not sure if it really helped anything, but it is doing great now. I'll add a pic

OH.. you'll notice the COLOR differance. THE ONLY differance is the earlier pic.. posted in DEC 2k4 was under a 20K Aquamedic bulb that came in my Aqualight. The most recent pic.. from last month.. is under a 14K BlueLine (which I am VERY happy with so far).

B

 

[Rikko]

Here's a before and after of mine doing just the opposite:

When I first got it, it had been grown under 400W MH

After about six months, it browned quite a bit under my T5s to compensate for the reduced light.

 

[mirkus]

excuse the dirty glass. here is a growth update. It never really did much with color, only got lighter

 

[Anonymous]

I vote Lawdawg's is actually a Pocillopora damicornis. But of course, I may well be wrong...

Edit: I failed to notice there was a page two and this had already been addressed sufficiently.

 

[reefann]

Generally brown hard corals is due to high nutrients in the water causing large amounts of Zooxanthallea growth thus the brown coloration. Most holding systems and LFS have very nutrient rich water. I would say that your more intense lighting along with better water quality is the cause of the lightening of color. The specimen will probably go pink or green on you.
One other thing is the possibility of bleaching due to not enough acclimation to your intense light. Do you know what type of light this specimen was kept under before you purchased it?
BTW this species really loves water flow! They generally grow very densly so be sure to provide plenty of indirect flow and turbulence or it will not be very happy with you..
JJ