The Art of Never Giving Up On Corals

Since we are back in full swing, I want to share some experiences with you all regarding dying and rescuing corals. I will present you all a scenario that involved some of my SPS corals. They went from dying to thriving.

After I had moved into my last home, I encountered that huge mishap (where I lost 2/3 of my SPS colonies). Some of them completely RTN’ed, and some eventually STN’ed. And for some strange reason, there were a few corals that were in the ‘don’t know what is happening’ pile. My first instinct was to inspect the corals before deciding if they were the sunday night tuna.

The first thing that I did was to smell each colony. If the smell was rancid and reminiscent of rotten eggs, it was a goner. Luckily, none of the ones in question smelled bad. They had that fresh coral smell.. if you are a reefneck, you know what I mean. Polyp inspection came next. Unfortunately, none had them out. Not even in their coralites. That was a big red flag, as no polyps usually means that they were expelled much earlier. The last thing that I checked for was the color. Fortunately, most of the corals had vibrant color, and that gave me some hope.

So, I gave them a chance, even knowing that from past experience those corals would have been in the garbage. The first thing that I noticed about them was no algae growth on any part of the coral. That meant something significant. Coral tissue has an unique ability to fight off any algal growth on its skeleton.

Within a week, those corals started to show polyps out of their coralites. And in 2 weeks, they were almost back to normal.

I once had a montipora cap which had no polyps or great color. I thought to discard it and hope to find it again through a local reefer. I adjusted my parameters and did a few tweaks to the tank. Within two weeks, the color and the polyps were back in full force.

My advice, never give up on your corals… ever. If it starts to show color loss, but it has polyps, let it be. If it has no polyps, but vibrant color, let it be. Only when algae starts to grow on it, and/or the skeleton is left you may discard it into the thrash. Just check you parameters, clean your equipment, or do a waterchange and see you corals come back to life.