"Dead" Coral

[DevilDuck]

I've read quite a few posts about coral that seeming return from the dead. So now I'm questioning all the frags i've tossed in the garbage in the past.

 

What does everyone do with your coral skeletons of "dead" coral?

How long do you keep them?

What's your best coral resurrection story?

[Murphs_Reef]

So I had some Monti that got buried in the sand after I snapped bits off when cleaning. I put the rubble in the sump after I found it .. it sat in the sump for weeks and was just pure white bone  ....

As a part of hiding some of the putty when gluing down my acan, I used some of that rubble to the the putty... 2 weeks on there are new green polyps growing:

[LazyFish]

I had 2 acan lords that came back from old grey skeleton that had been bare a few months. It came back after I threw it in my new tank. One now has about 6 polyps the other has 3.

[W1ll]

I experienced a tank crash earlier this year and unfortunately I lost all my corals bar 1 small pink wall hammer. It RTN'd all the way down to this tiny little piece of tissue in the center of a bone white skeleton. The mouth was always gaping open, expelling zoox almost every day. It then started expelling large amounts of smelly brown slime and at this point I was certain it would be going in the bin in the next few days. Then miraculously, the brown slime stopped and the amount of zoox being expelled lessened every day. At that point I thought I would just leave it in my tank to see if it would recover, as the tissue recession seemed to have stopped, if not significantly slowed. Incredibly over the past 5 months, the tissue has slowly recovered, growing over the old dead parts of the skeleton and the hammer is back to what I believe to be full health. Just really goes to show the regenerative powers of these amazing creatures.

[Jaren45]

I had a cyphastrea frag in my tank for a whole year before it started growing. During this time it receded 95%, and turned completely white. I chucked it in the corner of my tank only to rediscover it months later, with 5 or 6 healthy bright polyps

[jservedio]

I've had about half a dozen corals come back from bare skeleton, some as late as 6 months later. The only time I throw out the skeleton is after a big coral fight to the death - they are super thorough when killing each other. I want to say in the last 5 or 6 years, of the few LPS I "lost", only a single lord didn't come back and that was after being nuked by a big favia.

 

Definitely just toss the skeletons on the sand for a few months in low flow and see what you get. My nicest acans came back from the dead.

[LazyFish]

I forgot about the massive gorg in my other 20. When I first got it a number of years ago it was improperly shipped and lost more than 95% of its tissue. In a last ditch effort to save it I cut away a thick margin of still living tissue on the border of  the narcotic areas leaving only a sliver of healthy tissue. I realy realy thought it was dead. It closed up and looked like just a tan glob hanging on the fibrous skeleton but it didnt fall off like the necrotic parts for weeks then boom it suddenly had polyps and took off recovering the skeleton in just a few months. Now its massive.

 

Never cut a gorg skeleton if you can help it only the tissue unless the skeleton has invasive algae or sutch on it or it cant be avoided. If it survives it can grow to recover the area.

[A.m.P]

6 hours ago, W1ll said:

I experienced a tank crash earlier this year and unfortunately I lost all my corals bar 1 small pink wall hammer. It RTN'd all the way down to this tiny little piece of tissue in the center of a bone white skeleton. The mouth was always gaping open, expelling zoox almost every day. It then started expelling large amounts of smelly brown slime and at this point I was certain it would be going in the bin in the next few days. Then miraculously, the brown slime stopped and the amount of zoox being expelled lessened every day. At that point I thought I would just leave it in my tank to see if it would recover, as the tissue recession seemed to have stopped, if not significantly slowed. Incredibly over the past 5 months, the tissue has slowly recovered, growing over the old dead parts of the skeleton and the hammer is back to what I believe to be full health. Just really goes to show the regenerative powers of these amazing creatures.

Now that's incredible, Wall hammers are renowned for suddenly going downhill as a colony, it's part of why people prefer branching.

[Jerad81]

OMG, this is definitely something that needs to be pointed out to newbies! I have never heard of this being possible before now and wish I would have known about it sooner!!! Now I wish I would have kept the skeletons I threw out believing my inexperience and trying to do too much too soon killed them. After reading through this post I can't help but wonder how many of those would be coming back as my tank matured, became more stable and I gained a better understanding of what I was doing. I guess now I know not to throw one out just because it looks dead!

[DevilDuck]

42 minutes ago, Jerad81 said:

OMG, this is definitely something that needs to be pointed out to newbies! I have never heard of this being possible before now and wish I would have known about it sooner!!! Now I wish I would have kept the skeletons I threw out believing my inexperience and trying to do too much too soon killed them. After reading through this post I can't help but wonder how many of those would be coming back as my tank matured, became more stable and I gained a better understanding of what I was doing. I guess now I know not to throw one out just because it looks dead!

Exactly why I started this thread! I wish I knew that before I tossed so many seeming dead coral. I'm going to setup a coral graveyard either in the sump or less visible area of the display!

Conversely, I've also seen video where people will toss coral that have brown jelly'ed in fear of the brown jelly spreading in the tank. Now I'm not sure what to do with "dead" coral.

 

[Tired]

If it's got brown jelly, you want it out. If it just withered away, it's probably fine to leave in. 

[ptora]

I had a hammer that polyp bailed out on me. The only reason why I didn't pull it out was that it had a little baby head still at its based. After a month or so just right where the flesh meets the skeleton on the bail out head had popped out at least another 5 heads to my surprise.

[mcarroll]

On 10/29/2021 at 6:45 PM, DevilDuck said:

Exactly why I started this thread! I wish I knew that before I tossed so many seeming dead coral. I'm going to setup a coral graveyard either in the sump or less visible area of the display!

Conversely, I've also seen video where people will toss coral that have brown jelly'ed in fear of the brown jelly spreading in the tank. Now I'm not sure what to do with "dead" coral.

 

Folklore has come up with the idea that "BJD" is an actual disease.  IMO it's mostly just necrotic tissue....just so happens that these corals have A LOT of tissue, so it looks like "BJD".   (Just a guess.)

 

For my own story, it's my "potato chip" Pavona coral.  I purchased it from a "frag tank" at my LFS mostly as a rescue....it didn't seem to be doing well.  I had already resuscitated other corals from this tank successfully. (Mostly, that system lacked light and nutrients...easy corrections.)

 

But this coral was an exception...it didn't seem to recover, or at least not that I could easily tell.  And after a year or two I thought it had died off.

 

Since I did not predict failure at all, I had actually (and unusually) epoxied this coral into my rocks, so I had no choice but to leave it in place.

 

Eventually I took most of the lights off this tank and moved them to the first upgrade tank I added to the system....moving most of my corals with the light over to a new 50 Gallon.

 

The rock with the "dead" Pavona stayed in the "old" 38 Gallon tank, which after a short period without light got a set of LED's (my first LED's...EcoXotic Panoramas) to cover half of the tank.  There were some other corals still in the old tank with him, including a colossal orange skin/green tip birdsnest.   The birdsnest grew up to around basketball size, but the LED's burned out within a year or two.  I eventually built a rendition of @TinyGiant's DIY LED setup so the whole 38 Gallon would be lit up instead of just 1/2 of it as with the old ecoXotic setup (which was 4 strips, BTW).

 

This DIY over the 38 Gallon was the first light I had a might meter for....and it was putting out about 15,000 lux at the water line.  On the low end of the "good lighting" spectrum.

 

The tank was this way, including the "dead" Pavona skeleton for 5 or 6 years, maybe more like 8.

 

Fast forward to a couple years ago when I (finally!) upgraded everything into a single tank – my current 125 Gallon AIO – including the rock that "dead" Pavona was on.

 

Around a year ago I noticed that the Pavona had (at some point in time) started growing again, to the point that it almost looks like a whole coral.  I hadn't been paying any attention at all to it for YEARS.

 

Thought I had pics of this Pavona in my tank thread, but must've been something I posted in someone else's thread.

 

I still can't believe it and the damn coral is in my tank!

[mcarroll]

[Tired]

Very cool. It sure seems to be alive. Nice to have rebounding, too; not exactly a rare coral, but a cool shape. 

 

Has it grown since then? I'd be curious to see how the skeleton will change, with areas of what look like dead skeleton for it to grow over. 

[mcarroll]

Was waiting for this to upload...it's not a great photo, but I've outlined the old skeleton and the epoxy wad that is anchoring it in.  The new growth is actually coming out of the right-most "lobe" of the old skeleton, not from the center.  Optical illusion.

 

[Murphs_Reef]

And another example... This Monti wasn't only dead (or that's how it seemed)... It was covered in Coralline.. now look at the polyps and even the new flesh growing at the top right of the image 

[Tired]

That's pretty impressive that the coraline didn't manage to smother it. Stubborn little monti. 

[Jakesaw]

On 10/29/2021 at 5:00 PM, Jerad81 said:

OMG, this is definitely something that needs to be pointed out to newbies!

 

Now I wish I would have kept the skeletons I threw out believing my inexperience and trying to do too much too soon killed them. After reading through this post I can't help but wonder how many of those would be coming back as my tank matured, 

As a newbie, your tank parameters were probably off, and wouldn't have got a return on any corals that weren't " hearty " like a GSP / zenias. 

 

I had a Candycane that I lost slowly.  Head retracted into base over many months *( No nutrients in tank ).  I thought it was growing skeleton around polyp but the polyb was just disappearing.  This was all after the head split into two.  

 

Eventually tossed it.  Can't help but wonder.  But it was probably dead dead!  Doesn't hurt to hold onto em a few months for future reference.  Just to see what happens.

[Ohmegg]

On 10/30/2021 at 7:14 PM, mcarroll said:

Folklore has come up with the idea that "BJD" is an actual disease.  IMO it's mostly just necrotic tissue....just so happens that these corals have A LOT of tissue, so it looks like "BJD".   (Just a guess.)

 

For my own story, it's my "potato chip" Pavona coral.  I purchased it from a "frag tank" at my LFS mostly as a rescue....it didn't seem to be doing well.  I had already resuscitated other corals from this tank successfully. (Mostly, that system lacked light and nutrients...easy corrections.)

 

But this coral was an exception...it didn't seem to recover, or at least not that I could easily tell.  And after a year or two I thought it had died off.

 

Since I did not predict failure at all, I had actually (and unusually) epoxied this coral into my rocks, so I had no choice but to leave it in place.

 

Eventually I took most of the lights off this tank and moved them to the first upgrade tank I added to the system....moving most of my corals with the light over to a new 50 Gallon.

 

The rock with the "dead" Pavona stayed in the "old" 38 Gallon tank, which after a short period without light got a set of LED's (my first LED's...EcoXotic Panoramas) to cover half of the tank.  There were some other corals still in the old tank with him, including a colossal orange skin/green tip birdsnest.   The birdsnest grew up to around basketball size, but the LED's burned out within a year or two.  I eventually built a rendition of @TinyGiant's DIY LED setup so the whole 38 Gallon would be lit up instead of just 1/2 of it as with the old ecoXotic setup (which was 4 strips, BTW).

 

This DIY over the 38 Gallon was the first light I had a might meter for....and it was putting out about 15,000 lux at the water line.  On the low end of the "good lighting" spectrum.

 

The tank was this way, including the "dead" Pavona skeleton for 5 or 6 years, maybe more like 8.

 

Fast forward to a couple years ago when I (finally!) upgraded everything into a single tank – my current 125 Gallon AIO – including the rock that "dead" Pavona was on.

 

Around a year ago I noticed that the Pavona had (at some point in time) started growing again, to the point that it almost looks like a whole coral.  I hadn't been paying any attention at all to it for YEARS.

 

Thought I had pics of this Pavona in my tank thread, but must've been something I posted in someone else's thread.

 

I still can't believe it and the damn coral is in my tank!

I'm always shocked at how hardy some of these corals are. One of the reasons I keep blowing off my shriveled "mohecan" zoas that haven't opened in weeks. I'm hoping they will come back. I also hope this hardyness manifests in the wild reefs as well in regard to environmental and SCTLD. 

[jcrisman2009]

On 12/14/2021 at 4:54 PM, Jakesaw said:

As a newbie, your tank parameters were probably off, and wouldn't have got a return on any corals that weren't " hearty " like a GSP / zenias. 

 

I had a Candycane that I lost slowly.  Head retracted into base over many months *( No nutrients in tank ).  I thought it was growing skeleton around polyp but the polyb was just disappearing.  This was all after the head split into two.  

 

Eventually tossed it.  Can't help but wonder.  But it was probably dead dead!  Doesn't hurt to hold onto em a few months for future reference.  Just to see what happens.

Never count a coral out! They can come back fully if the environs is conducive to do so.