Thoughts on SPS "healing"

kevensquint · Apr 23, 2020

Hello, I was just wondering after observing for the past while. Some of my SPS ( montipora digi and sunset) that were adversely affected by too low nutrients (paled out and barely any PE). Are extremely slow to show any type of improvement after params have been improved to the point that any new additions of similar species take off right away. The damaged corals take months to reset themselves? Or are they scrapped once hit too hard with out of order params? Generally speaking.

Euphyllia97 · Apr 23, 2020

I have seen that my damaged sps will remain damaged for some time. However I have also noticed that the damaged part starts to grow back after a certain time (stable params for a few weeks) . It even came to the point that part of my damaged montipora capricornis has been overtaking the healthy part if the coral. (Montipora are of course not comparable to other types of sps)

piranhaman00 · Apr 23, 2020

I have an acro frag that had STN that has stopped. I havent seen it heal at all but PE is goo elsewhere on the frag. Time will tell I guess.

Simply__J · Apr 23, 2020

I traded for two Monti caps a red and green, they didn't acclimate very well to my system to the point where they both lost their color. Good news is that the green one took about 3 weeks to regain most of it's color back, the red one is just starting to show signs of recovery and it's been almost 5 weeks. So I would say don't give up hope.

Epic Aquaculture · Apr 23, 2020

When a coral bleaches, it has expelled it's zooxanthellae. Unfortunately it can take months, or even years sometimes for it to grow back and begin to color up again. Sometimes the stress is simply too much, and it never recovers, and instead slowly wastes away. The best things you can do are to put it in a lower light area, and make sure that NO3 and PO4 do not bottom out. With any luck the coral will pull through and become healthy again.

svogun · Apr 23, 2020

I've had luck with nearly completely bleached monti's and acros recovering with nutrient dosing. It takes months for them to recover sometimes but if you keep things stable IME they come back.