When is it okay to say, "Maybe it's just this one coral that's having issues"?

[Zer0]

I feel like we've all probably been in similar scenarios; where everything in the aquarium is looking pristine, but then there's that one coral that just looks absolutely miserable and on the verge of melting into oblivion. We test our water parameters to see if anything could be to blame, but everything comes back normal. Other coral of the same species around it seem to be unaffected.

When is it okay to say, "There's clearly nothing more I can do for this coral. It has chosen death."

Or is that never an acceptable answer?

Your thoughts?

 

[sde1500]

it is 100% an acceptable answer. In theory we all do everything we can to make all corals happy, but some just don't respond. I'm not going nuts dosing/water changing/adjusting light and flow etc, because a single coral is unhappy. I'll try moving it around, dipping, w/e for it, but no way would I risk throwing other things off when its the minority struggling.

 

[The_Skrimp]

I’m unfortunately at that point right now to be honest. I have a ton of frags in my tank and they’re all thriving. In fact I’ve never lost a coral. Not so much as a head on a growing frag. They’re growing like crazy so i decided it’s time to make my first big coral purchase and bought a nice lobophyllia colony. It has been dying ever since I put it in my tank. I’ve been nothing but proactive to help it survive. I’ve gone as far as medicating my entire tank to make sure it didn’t have an infection. As of right now it’s almost all white, lost most of its flesh and I’m leaving it in there hoping the tiny amount of living tissue it has left can bounce back. I just don’t know what to do for it anymore. It’s the only coral I’ve ever had that just didn’t want to be in my tank no matter what I tried.

 

[FishyFishFish]

I think it's somewhat amazing that any corals survive in our tanks at all.

By evolution in the ocean they thrive in areas that suit their needs. Then one day someone comes along and removes them from their habitat, ships them around the world to a dealer, then sometimes they are mailed again and yet they still survive. We then get them and put many different types of coral, close together, in our relatively small glass boxes where the conditions are somewhat similar throughout (when compared with the ocean). My small amount of snorkelling experience suggests to me that, whilst conditions in the wild may be fairly consistent locally, they aren't the same across a whole reef; temperatures are different, flows are different, light levels are different and depths are different. We also don't have enough volume for all of the different varieties of fish and creatures in our aquariums that all contribute to the reef ecosystem.

Whilst we can do things to ensure that we place corals in our system that suit our particular parameters, maybe it is inevitable than on occasion you might get something that just isn't happy no matter what you do. You can't move them 30ft deep, you can't really have different temperatures in different parts of the tank, you can shade them or move them to the surface but it's not easy to give them different photoperiods etc. Whilst we try what we can to keep them thriving, I think sometimes it just isn't always possible.

 

[Dburr1014]

I have a mixed tank, leathers, LPS, and sps. I have a toad stool that has been in decline for over a year. I'm about ready to give it away. Other leathers are fine.