Bleaching coral

[The sea slug]

At the store, I got a tiny piece of broken-off coral with my purchase, it was just in the bag-and I can't remember if they said what it was or if it was just an accident. Now it's bleaching, and since I can't figure out what it is, I don't know what to do to help it. It was red and hard and flat, and was broken off, as far as I can tell, from a larger disk. Now it's white and actually has a little algae on it. Any ideas what it is and if I can fix it?

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Montipora? If you have correct lighting, water quality and lots of flow then Yes. This is one of the easiest SPS corals to keep.

 

[The sea slug]

Thanks-How much light?

 

[Dkuhlmann]

They require good quality lighting, more of a what kind of lighting do you have? Medium to strong lighting from HO T5 at a minimum. Many have LED's and give them too much light and it burns them. It all depends on the type of lighting and with all corals you need to start them off lower to give them less light and then slowly move them up in the system so they can acclimate them to your lighting. There are lots of good sticky's in the SPS forum that tell you best practices for keeping SPS corals. This jut happens to be one of the easier ones that doesn't require the intense lighting that for instance Acros prefer.

 

[The sea slug]

I wonder if I should just give it to a friend...I have a regular old Finnex led light.

 

[thegrun]

I wonder if I should just give it to a friend...I have a regular old Finnex led light.

I suspect it is past saving, it looks dead to me.

 

[reefer1970]

Yes looks too far gone. Try moving it directly under light if you haven't