Tip of the Day – 12/22/2013

Corals can suffer from several different types of stressors, with those events often leading to periods of bleaching, or tissue loss. Sometimes this bleaching can happen very quickly, called Rapid Tissue Necrosis (RTN), often taking large portions of the coral in just hours. When these bleaching events happen to one specific coral in your tank, one of the knee-jerk reactions is to immediately take it out and dip it in any one of the numerous coral dipping solutions that are supposed to kill pests that might be harming the coral. While we certainly see the value of dipping corals, it’s best to not react so hastily when encountering a suddenly bleaching coral. The dips are often quite stressful and dipping a half dead coral might just finish the job. Instead, inspect the coral in the aquarium and try to find out why it is dying. If no solutions are found, meaning you can’t find a pest that dipping would fix, then try moving the coral to a different spot. You could try to an abbreviated dip to see if any pests are agitated by the process, but we do not recommend placing the coral in a dip solution for long.