How to tell if a coral is dyed a different color?

[Tennyson]

Hey guys, how do you know if a coral is dyed to be a different color? I'm talking dyed LPS coral with hard skeletons. Are there any signs a dyed coral has and can you test if there's dye present in tissue? I think I purchased a dyed coral.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

I have never heard of coral being dyed. Perhaps provide a picture so we can see why you are concerened. But Dying a coral would be a very hard process and honestly would benefit the seller none.

 

[joseserrano]

I don’t think so. You may be referring to bleached corals that can look outrageous color wise sometimes.

 

[Hypan]

I haven’t seen any dyed corals in quite some time. They were mostly coming out of indo and Vietnam if I recall. Some of the more common ones were colts, pagodas, sinularia and Sebae anemones. You could easily tell. Mostly were solid bright highlighter yellow or pink.

 

[Tennyson]

So the coral in question first appeared here in 2017. A scammer on R2R was selling blue sun coral and ran with the money, so he was banned and all posts deleted.

His profile photo shows brightly colored sun coral. Below is one of his pics from a sales thread. These blue and green sun coral are reappearing and suddenly very popular now

 

[Tennyson]

Anybody?

 

[AcroNem]

I have seen legit odd colored Tubastrea like this recently, but only from two vendors. The first and other pics look saturated but the corals are real. In the past (I mean 15-20+years ago) we saw some died soft corals but I haven't seen any since, especially no stony corals. So in short, it's a real coral they're just oversaturating pictures and scamming it sounds like.

 

[joseserrano]

Those do look unreal

 

[vetteguy53081]

Tubastrea appears like other colors under certain actinic lighting but I have seen a blue/green base similar to what you have in pic

 

[Tennyson]

So this was the piece I got. Under most lighting it appears blue, under whites its green. The red spots in the 2nd pic is food.

 

[Tennyson]

This photo off instagram is what they look like extended. Mine is too sick to open though.

 

[Thespammailaccount]

What leads you to believe the coral has been colored I am curious. Is it peeling/flaking/rubbing off and you can see another color underneath or the color just does not look real or something else?

 

[joseserrano]

What’s the color it showing?

 

[Tennyson]

What leads you to believe the coral has been colored I am curious. Is it peeling/flaking/rubbing off and you can see another color underneath or the color just does not look real or something else?

So when I first got it shipped it already seemed really sick, had mesenterial filaments everywhere and behaved like it was infected. A couple others who bought blue sun coral have reported the same - mesenterial filaments.

The day after, I notice my other sun coral start looking sick too. In my 5 years of keeping sun coral, I have never seen them do this. Now my other sun coral have mesenterial filaments, the yellow stringy stuff showing.

I dipped the green/blue sun coral and notice its skeleton is exposed right after, pink skeleton

I frag the sun coral with hopes of saving it and stopping the deterioration. the insides are yellow, orange, red (from food), green, with white and pink skeleton.

I cut one frag of just flesh and gastrointestinal tract and notice the insides start out green/yellow (Left photo). After 2 days, the insides are completely green while some flesh from the surface is gone.

Some frags are still alive, but all of them were basically shredded from a quick 5-10 minute fragging session. I've never seen or cut a sun coral that was so weak. And again many of the frags have pink skeleton exposed underneath instead of white.

 

[kyleinpdx]

@Dr. Dendrostein thought you might have some insight!

 

[F i s h y]

Strange...

 

[Sabellafella]

Lady's and gentleman. Yes they dyed them

 

[noahreefer]

Heres mine! the blue really pops but its kind of hard because I run blues so its not the best representation.

 

[Sabellafella]

 

[Sabellafella]

when they came in the bubble algae was dyed blue witch was the first giveaway. Then when you saw them it makes a pretty big mess. Unfortunate since they are really pretty when the polyps come out