Photo Period and SPS coloration

[kevinpo]

I thought I would post an observation I recently made:

Over the summer months I cut back the photoperiod on my 400W 10,000K bulbs from 9 hours to 7 hours due to heat problems I was encountering. I noticed that over time my blue tip A. nobilis lost the bright blue tips and one of my other corals turned a very nice baby blue from purple. I just thought that, in the case of the nobilis the bulbs were getting old and losing some of their intensity. On the other (since the color was so awesome) that it was due to my great skill J/K that it was finally beginning to get used to my tank as the growth really took off also.

Well about Sept. 1st I increased the photo period back to 9 hours and over the 30 days since the tips on the nobilis are bright blue again but the other coral is starting to turn purple again and the growth has slowed somewhat. 2 other SPS colonies also exhibited slight color changes one is a pink table which the tips around the outside edge have turned blue and the other is an A. formosa which has many more purple highlights than before.

I have just increased the photoperiod to 10 hours to see what happens.

Note: I haven't noticed any change on the other corals (105 or so).

Regards,
Kevin

[scubadude]

Very interesting Kevin! Got Pics?...heh I feel like im in a milke commercial. Wouldnt that be so kewl if we could actually change the colors of all our corals by our photoperiod time.....hmmmm