Sps Dead? Or Can Recover?

JAMSOURY · Dec 11, 2019

One of my sps is completely white with burnt tips. Looks like there isn’t any flesh on it, however, there is also no algae growing on it. Usually when I see dead sps, it brown algae will grow on or around it. It’s been like this for a couple weeks. Anyone ever have a coral bounce back from this state?

Epic Aquaculture · Dec 11, 2019

JAMSOURY said:
One of my sps is completely white with burnt tips. Looks like there isn’t any flesh on it, however, there is also no algae growing on it. Usually when I see dead sps, it brown algae will grow on or around it. It’s been like this for a couple weeks. Anyone ever have a coral bounce back from this state?

Sounds dead. no flesh = RTN

authentic · Dec 11, 2019

i have had the smallest speck of a coral regrow but it takes forever and i never count on it

SeaDweller · Dec 11, 2019

depends on when it died. If just recently, maybe not yet. If it stays like that, it might not be dead. Buddy of mine has a ghost white acro that you'd swear is dead. But its alive: white flesh, white polyps, growing. It's just a white on white acro that looks like skeleton, dude is no noob either, just how it is. And it's not paled out... it just has NO color but white.

DuckSlayer627 · Dec 11, 2019

If it has flesh it possible for it to recover. In August of last year(2018) my chiller malfunctioned while I was out of town and brought temperature down to 65 degrees in about 12-18 hrs. Tank was mostly Acro's with some other SPS. Most of the colonies did die but a few were completely white and looked like stuff you would buy in a gift shop. After 6-8 weeks they started to color back up and today they are just as nice as ever .

Here are two examples. The bleached pics are from about a week after the tank was 65 degrees and the other pictures are the same coral that I took yesterday.

Worthy1 · Dec 11, 2019

Depends on the cause and how far gone it is. My new tank I had to move pieces over from my old tank as it needed to be shutdown. The meant going into an environment with different flow, lighting, nutrients, bacteria etc.

First thing to do if it is a colony is break off good sections and frag them as it can spread. Look for polyp extension on bleached bits. I was successful in bringing back the frags once they were used to the new conditions. and some bleached areas recovered as the polyps were still out.