Are SPS ever really dead

jdstank · Feb 16, 2020

Just a question, based on some odd experience with SPS that by all accounts would have been chucked into the trash I’m guessing by most people.

I have about 20 small frags of SPS and some LPS that were white skeletons, looked dead as heck to me. The tank they were in went through a nitrate spike of 70-80 for weeks undetected. The nitrates were eventually brought back down to 10-ish but it appeared the damage was done. Multiple stylos, undata, montis, enchinata, acros, etc as well as some acans and trumpets were devastated. The acans and trumpets showed zero tissue, the SPS were white with no polyp extension at all. On a whim I set up a biocube I had with a Steve’s led fixture and moved everything into it. 3 weeks later I’m seeing some of the SPS have very tiny polyp extenstion (not any major coloring up yet but theyreand the acans have completely rebounded. So is this just a quirk or are SPS corals capable of returning from the grave?

Took a few quick pics to hopefully track this as they make their comeback. Only running blues right now so will change lighting later with some whites added to gain some more timeline pics for comparison down the road.

naterealbig · Feb 16, 2020

Sierra_Bravo · Feb 16, 2020

Trust me, you can get them all the way to dead and beyond. . .

jdstank · Feb 16, 2020

Very cool then. I’ve seen people post pics of massive colonies seemingly dead that get tossed and always wondered why they weren’t attempting to resuscitate them based on what I’m seeing happen with these frags.

vpoiu1263 · Feb 16, 2020

If we could keep water in stable parameters and low organics, I think some of the acro will recover after several months .
I have that experience in my tank.

Gareth elliott · Feb 16, 2020

Dead sps is a little different from bleached sps.

Ive had bleached acros slowly recover, ive had mostly dead acros eventually cover over areas that tissue has died.

But if the entire coral has no colarites, no signs of tissue under uv(for attached corals this is easier than inspecting up close) or becomes entirely covered in attached macro algae. Its time to chuck that coral.
Microalgae is a little different, it is not warded off by living coral tissue.

motortrendz · Feb 16, 2020

jdstank said:
Just a question, based on some odd experience with SPS that by all accounts would have been chucked into the trash I’m guessing by most people.

I have about 20 small frags of SPS and some LPS that were white skeletons, looked dead as heck to me. The tank they were in went through a nitrate spike of 70-80 for weeks undetected. The nitrates were eventually brought back down to 10-ish but it appeared the damage was done. Multiple stylos, undata, montis, enchinata, acros, etc as well as some acans and trumpets were devastated. The acans and trumpets showed zero tissue, the SPS were white with no polyp extension at all. On a whim I set up a biocube I had with a Steve’s led fixture and moved everything into it. 3 weeks later I’m seeing some of the SPS have very tiny polyp extenstion (not any major coloring up yet but theyreand the acans have completely rebounded. So is this just a quirk or are SPS corals capable of returning from the grave?

Took a few quick pics to hopefully track this as they make their comeback. Only running blues right now so will change lighting later with some whites added to gain some more timeline pics for comparison down the road.

Your second pic doesnt look like polyp extension. It looks like algae is starting to grow on the dead skeleton.

ESH · Feb 16, 2020

I’m learning this myself recently. 3-4 weeks ago almost all the montis in my tank died out on me. The bright pink/orange one in the picture only had a few polyps left that I could only see in blues. I left it alone and here we are today with clear signs of recovery. Most of it died, but I’d expect it to grow back over the center portions.

im also seeing the same thing going on with some lps to include favias, scolys, and a chalice that looked like nothing but fish bones.

Here are some photos over the course of 3-4 weeks.
Start of die out.