Aclimating Corals to live in warmer water

[Inwall190]

According to the following article, is it possible to acclimate corals to live in warmer water by slowly increasing the temperature over the course of several months to a year?

That way we can avoid using chillers which are not very efficient to run and rely more on heaters to keep our temperature constant.

I believe the pace at which changes in temperature happen is more important to coral health than the actual temperature. That way the coral have time to adapt to using different algae to capture light.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22065659-30417,00.html?from=public_rss

 

[theredben]

Firstly, beware the article that does not reference their sources.

Second, the tempature change they are talking about is only a few degrees at this point, not really enough to change someones decision between whether to get a chiller or not.

 

[greenbean36191]

This work isn't nearly as revolutionary is the article makes it sound. Basically all it's talking about are different clades of zooxanthellae. People have known for years that there are different clades which have varying degrees of temperature tolerance. In cool times the less thermally tolerant clades predominate, but after bleaching events, corals tend to be repopulated by the more tolerant clades. Eventually though there tends to be a reversion back to the less tolerant clades, suggesting that they're more efficient.

This "news" has very little to d o with the ability of corals to withstand climate change, as the article repeatedly says, and almost nothing to do with temperature tolerance in our tanks. There is little or no chance of switching algae clades in our tanks. That's a relatively moot point though since essentially every coral coming into the hobby is already capable of tolerating large swings and long-term temperatures from around 76-86 and shorter excursions from ~68-90. Chiller and temp controller use in the hobby is already excessive. People in the hobby tend to acclimatize corals to cool, narrow temp ranges and create their own problems that wouldn't have otherwise existed.

 

[Inwall190]

Good point greenbean.

Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Here in california, it gets hot more often than it gets cold. I have had my corals at around 84 for over many months and they seem to do fine. Only when temperature drops or rises quickly do I find that they bleach.