Yellow Leather turning brown

[NoviceReefer]

My yellow leather coral was bright yellow with white tentacles when I placed it in the tank. After about two months now the body is still yellow but the tentacles and the top are a light tan. The tentacles extend and it looks healthy...only that bright white has disappeared.

I have 4 65W 8800K PCs for lights. The bulbs are about 10 months old. The tank is a 75 gallon and there is no ammonia, nitrite, or phosphate. The nitrate is about 5 ppm and the pH ranges from 8.1 to 8.3.

Any suggestions?

 

[danmhippo]

I would suspect the leather when you purchased it was dyed. Now the natural color is coming back.

 

[monkeyboy]

Could have been dyed and/or bleached at the time you purchased it. The brown color is healthy, white is not. HTH

 

[hurrifan]

Or... I have had a yellow for a while. It is bright, bright yellow. I have mine under 400w MH about 1/2 way up in the water column. It may be that be is loosing color b/c of the lack of light. I have read that they require intense lighting. I may be wrong, but it is my .02 cents.

 

[Rick O]

I suspect it's a lighting issue. Mine was a vivid yellow when I got it. Even though mine is mid way up in a tank lit by 250 watt MH it is somewhat darker than it was when I got it. These corals do like intense light.

 

[dvb]

I have a yellow leather as well and it did the same thing when the algae started growing pretty well. After a couple of weeks it shed its top layer. It looked like a slimy film. That seemed to help a little bit, but mine has also darkened quite a bit. I have a 55 gal with power compacts. The leather is at the bottom though.

 

[dobish]

I would suspect the leather was dyed.....only because every bright yellow leather I've seen has bright yellow polyps as well.

It may also be possible that your lighting is not sufficient, but with how you describe this situation my first thought is it's dyed even though I haven't heard of dyed leathers much.

It would be interesting to hear the thoughts of James W, Tom O'Toole, or Matt M on this one...