SPS - anyone else struggle with maintaining yellows?

Smite

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#1
My pink lemonade is now mostly green along with a piece i got from RR USA a while back, I belive it was called "Banana Bonanza" or something along those lines. Anyway, both were nice vivid yellow pieces originally.

I feel I have strong lighting going, I have ramped my 3 g3 pros up to 45% peak over the last couple months. Fixtures are 10" above water, pieces are 6-8" below water surface and directly under the radions. Lighting is 20k preset and goes 14k for peak for 2 hours.

My phosphates and nitrates register 0 still, but I have algae and cyanobacteria so I know that's not 100% accurate.

Cal, alk and mag are all kept by my CaRx. It did get plugged up and my alk dropped to just under 7. Some pieces browned but the green issue was even before that.

My blues are strong for the most part. Greens pop well. Pinks and reds are washed a bit. Orange is popping the best of all.
I run UV and carbon so the waters super clear. Very strong flow.

Should I keep cranking the lights up over time? Or is there something else that can effect yellows?
 

Smite

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#3
I'll keep cranking them up then. It's got a prime spot as high as it can go.

Ati was the plan but I didn't get any bites on my G3s so I'm sticking with them for now.
 
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#4
Getting sps to color is still a mystery :) especially yellow but I do find that sps color better under T5.
6-8 inches below water surface...maybe you need to move it up a bit. I have my Piink Floyd just 2-3 in below water surface and it's getting much more yellow now that before. PLus if you have strong flow and lots of surface agitation that will reduce light transmission significantly. I believe yellow sps needs the strongest light as compared with other colors.
 
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#5
Tbh 45% isn't much. I had mine at 75% but if you do move to stronger lighting do so slowly. My lemonade was growing fairly ok under radions but did seem to do better under t5. Do you have pe at night / during the day? That coral should be pretty hairy
 

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#6
Thanks Eric. I did bump up my flow significantly in hopes to rid the tank of that cyano. That probably is playing a major role in it. I just bumped them up last weekend but I'll up the lighting intensity over the next month or two and look for a change.
 

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#7
Tbh 45% isn't much. I had mine at 75% but if you do move to stronger lighting do so slowly. My lemonade was growing fairly ok under radions but did seem to do better under t5. Do you have pe at night / during the day? That coral should be pretty hairy
Decent during the day. Everything's super hairy at night.

I'll take a picture of them when I get home and update. Maybe you'll be able to tell me if the polyp extension looks okay.

I don't have fish in the tank, so I grabbed some oyster feast yesterday. I plan to feed a small dose nightly. Cutting way back in the Reef Energy, seems like that's when the cyano came on strong.
 

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