What role does salt play in coral?

[geddavis]

I recently was thinking about how different elements effect coral. In doing research I saw a lot of in (blank) study it has been shown that salt greatly affects coral’s biologically. What exactly dose it do chemically and over all. Also is it possible to substitute salt not the other elements with something else that won’t effect fresh water animals. If you know of an article that covers this please post a link below thanks.

 

[Macdaddynick1]

here you go. Mollies can adapt to saltwater.

 

[Flippers4pups]

No idea.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

All organisms use different ions to perform various functions within cells, primarily utilizing the polarity of those ions to move or activate things.

Specific to ‘salt’, for example, the nerve axons in coral (and every other organism with a nervous system) would use the Na+ to generate action potentials (nerve pulses) through a polarization/depolarization process.

 

[PatW]

Fish are actually sort of irrelevant. Fish have blood and interstitial fluid levels that are hypoosmotic to seawater. That means less salty.

Corals and virtually all marine invertebrates have body fluids that are isoosmotic, the same saltiness as sea water.

By “salt”, I don’t know what you mean. In everyday language, “salt” means NaCl, which is just one kind of salt others are: MgCl2, CaCl2, sodium nitrate and so on.

Corals use various elements or ions in their metabolic activities and they just extract these from sea water which is a blend of many different salts.

Hard corals us Ca and carbonate for their skeletons. They use nitrates and phosphates in their metabolisms to make amino acids, nucleotides and other compounds. They also need other nutrients like iron, iodine, magnesium and so on.

 

[geddavis]

Thanks every one