Cali Kid Corals

Acro growing colorful in some parts, pale in others

ksliech

ksliech

Supporting Member
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I've had this piece for several months and it's been growing really well. However, half of the colony is nicely colored, and the other is super pale. Here it is up close, showing the front part of it is very pale and the back part is green and pink.

Screenshot 2026-01-02 at 9.22.56 PM.png


Here it is from the side. White balance is a little off, but you can see part of it is nice and green with vibrant tips, and the rest is pale with some occasional green.
Screenshot 2026-01-04 at 8.43.13 PM.png


Here it is a little further away from the front.

Screenshot 2026-01-02 at 9.23.43 PM.png


Water parameters:
  • Alk: 9.2 dKH
  • Ca: 420 ppm
  • Mg: 1370 ppm
  • Nitrate: 10 ppm
  • Phosphate: 0.1 ppm
It's getting somewhere around 350-400 PAR. I'm dosing Tropic Marin A & K trace weekly (10ml each).

Any ideas?
 
derek_SR said:
Tell us more about your husbandry! I'm envious of your PE.
Click to expand...
I've been on a bit of a journey.

I had a massive infestation of dictyota macro algae that was absolutely everywhere, and zero nitrate and phosphate. I ended up reluctantly using fluconazole to nuke it, which completely wiped it out without any side effects... well until the cyano came. Then I was loaded with that for a while, which spurred me to get my act together on nitrate and phosphate. I had to very heavily dose both for weeks to get the numbers up and steady. After many weeks of unrelenting cyano, I went nuclear again but this time with chemiclean. That also miraculously worked great with no side effects, thankfully. But then you guessed it - dinos! I went through at least two different types, culminating in the goopy stuff with trapped bubbles. At this time I was still struggling to keep my nutrients up, but once I got those numbers steady, the dinos slowly receded. I was in there daily blowing off the rocks and siphoning lots of them into my roller mat, but then they slowly went away. Now, no nuisances and things are growing extremely well.

Dosing:
  • 1.9L of kalk per day via K1 kalk stirrer (thanks @Turkeysammich)
  • 30ml AFR per day (kalk can't keep up)
  • 20ml NeoPhos per day
  • 9.5ml NeoNitro per day
Feeding
  • Auto-feeder dispenses x-small ChromaBoost once during the day
  • Formula 1 w/ Selcon in the evenings
  • Phyto several times per week
 
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