SPS advice please

[somethings fishy]

Ok i have an sps colony in my tank a little bit bigger than my fist. It is doing well but i noticed that som of the lower shaded branches are losing there vibrance. The coral is a bright yellow and the lower branches are turning kind of dull yellowish orange my thought was that they arent recieving enough light do to the upper branches shading them. my question is should i frag the lower branches or just leave them alone.

 

[Anonymous]

hi.
You are correct in saying that the shading of the upper branch cause the lower portion as well as the base to brown out and, possibly dies. In nature, the moving sun alleviate this problem a bit, but with static shadow with out lighting system, it is a common problem.

So, yes, frag the lower branch so that you will make some use of them instead of just let them brown out and die.

 

[Sue Truett]

somethings fishy, what is your light setup?? Can you move this colony closer to the light?? Instead of fragging the colony I'd try to move it higher in the light first, then see if that helps. Fragging it is only going to make the colony look chopped up. I move mine all around til they are happy and have no problems with bottom branches browning. Make sure it is also getting good current. HTH..

my 180 ecosystem sps tank:
http://berlinmethod.com/suet/
my 120 ecosystem sps tank:
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[Roadrunner]

I would support the fragging idea on the lower branches. You can only move SPS so many times to fit in with what Sue talked about. Once they get really full there isn't much you can do but frag them. You could also consider fragging out some of the middle branches that are shading the lower ones and you will typically have multiple branches come out from these fragging points. If it is a true yellow color your local LFS would probably be interest in trading for these frags.....RR

 

[somethings fishy]

I have it under a 400W MH it is over half way up the rock structure any closer and it would be directly underneath the bulb. I think I could chop some branches off toward the back or the bottom without it looking too bad. It has probably in the range of 40 branches or more.