Life always finds a way

[TheDragonsReef]

Ive been in the hobby for 20 years and i still get surprised regularly by the animals we keep. My 265g had been running for over 12 years now and this particular pagoda cup coral has been dead for atleast 4 years. Complete skeleton, covered in coraline, then covered by a hollywood stunner and now getting over grown by an acro and some zoas, but today after years of hibernation/death this pagoda has sprung a new polyp. Corals are incredible.

p.s. Ignore the bubble algae and aiptasia lol

 

[vetteguy53081]

Pics a little blue to see clearly
I do see zoas in top pic

 

[TheDragonsReef]

Pics a little blue to see clearly
I do see zoas in top pic

The second pic is a close up of the left side of the first picture. The little green polyp in the center of the second picture is what im refering to.

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

The 2nd picture i do see a pagoda cup mouth possibly! Congrats. Lol. Thats kool.
D

 

[TheDragonsReef]

The 2nd picture i do see a pagoda cup mouth possibly! Congrats. Lol. Thats kool.
D

Yeah i was pleasantly surprised to see it today. Now im wondering how many dead corals i should just kept and thrown somewhere out of sight haha

 

[vetteguy53081]

Tongue and plate coral notorious for amazing comebacks

 

[TheDragonsReef]

Tongue and plate coral notorious for amazing comebacks

Im curious as to hows its even possible, this guy has has no flesh or polyps for years. Do they stay alive dormant in their skeleton, do they leave behind the building blocks for new life after death? Its truely amazing how nature manages to pull through.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Im curious as to hows its even possible, this guy has has no flesh or polyps for years. Do they stay alive dormant in their skeleton, do they leave behind the building blocks for new life after death? Its truely amazing how nature manages to pull through.

Dead coral generally have cells within the core of skeleton. The factor is how it died in the first place and when certain traces are restored and sufficient nutrients are present, there is an opportunity for cells to restore and produce zooxanthelle for tissue/polyp support

 

[Saltyanimals]

I've heard countless examples of this where a dead coral isn't thrown out, just thrown out of the way in the back corner somewhere and it grows back. I started doing this myself and sure enough.. very resilient animals. Even SPS for that matter which is even stranger because it doesn't have the strong lights or flow.

I'm looking at 2 dead sps frags that started getting polyps again so I moved them back to the frag rack. It seem to grow from the tip of the dead skeleton and now starting to move further down coloring up. Here's a frag. Notice the coralline algae that the tissue is starting to grow over. I think this is a BC Rainbows in Spain frag if I remember correctly. Died 6 months ago. And the zoas on the base were random ones from the coral graveyard. Now I make a habit of keeping an eye out for life in that pile before I eventually throw it out.

 

[fish farmer]

Yeah i was pleasantly surprised to see it today. Now im wondering how many dead corals i should just kept and thrown somewhere out of sight haha

I try to keep skeleton around as long as possible. I had a monti frag die off to about 8 polyps and it made a comeback. I also have a orange monti in decline that I'm fragging currently and placing in different parts of the tank to see if there is hope.

Then there is the single green striped mushroom that popped out of my live rock after a complete heat wave meltdown. Those are more invasive than aiptasia in my tank now.

 

[Saltyanimals]

Return from the dead zombie sps. See the green coming out from the coralline

 

[Totroc3]

I had it happen to a Monti frag. It fell behind some rock and died. I found it a little over a year later and it was a bone white skeleton. I used it as a wedge for a piece of rock. Over a couple of months I noticed the white had turned a pale green so I moved it to a well lit spot and sure enough it grew back completely. I would never have believed it possible if I hadn’t witnessed it. It gives me hope for coral reefs around the world.

 

[Susan Edwards]

Had a blasto frag long dead. Cleaned out the old tank and saw it in the sludge with a hint of color. Said what the heck and put it in the new set up and wow, it looks better than ever. 5 heads now. 4 all came back and added a 5th

 

[fishguy242]

@Billldg let's see that plate, how long "dead" ?

 

[ReefRondo]

That’s amazing! Congrats man! I’ve had a few corals recover from almost dying but not coming back from what looked like fully dead. SPS in particular.

 

[Serg1976]

Ive been in the hobby for 20 years and i still get surprised regularly by the animals we keep. My 265g had been running for over 12 years now and this particular pagoda cup coral has been dead for atleast 4 years. Complete skeleton, covered in coraline, then covered by a hollywood stunner and now getting over grown by an acro and some zoas, but today after years of hibernation/death this pagoda has sprung a new polyp. Corals are incredible.

p.s. Ignore the bubble algae and aiptasia lol

It truly is amazing good luck

 

[ZoWhat]

I know.... ive been recently washing my hair with IO Reef Crystal's and my hair is growing back!

 

[juarec0201]

This guy was covered in hair algae and I almost threw out this small frag. It survived a tank transfer fail and numerous times I bottomed out nutrients. It grew one polyp and now it’s on its way to making a comeback