Why I never give up on a coral

[d3rryc]

I've seen enough miraculous recoveries of coral I was certain were toast that I never remove a "dead" coral until it gets overgrown with algae. The following pictures illustrate my point. I bought some live rock back around Christmas from a fellow reefer. He pointed to a bare patch and mentioned that it was actually the base of a montipora that had bleached out. I chipped the mystery monti from the surrounding rock and set it on the sand bed of my reef tank to see if it would recover. The first pic is about six weeks after I bought the rock, and it's just starting to blush with some color. The second pic is about a month later, and it's definitely colored back up. Another month later, and you can see the new growth around the edges. The last pic is from about two weeks ago, and now I have a nice, healthy little mini-colony of monti that started off as a bleached-out smudge on a piece of live rock.

Moral of the story - there's a reason this stuff has been around for a bazillion years. Give it half a chance, and you'll often be pleasantly surprised!

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[LuckySingh]

well done and nice shots....

[Mr Cob]

I've seen enough miraculous recoveries of coral I was certain were toast that I never remove a "dead" coral until it gets overgrown with algae.

I operate by this exact quote....until it's overgrown with algae or completely melted away there's still a chance.

I've also seen many great come-backs to include all types of coral and even RBTA that had completely lost all of it's tentacles from a K4, and it came back 100% after a few months when I thought for sure it was toast.

[Europhyllia]

Awesome! I actually read somehwere that it would be very difficult to wipe out 100% of the stony coral (although I could swear I've managed to do it...)