Bleaching Recovery

[SkiFletch]

Just wanted to quick post what I thought was an interesting anecdote on corals recovering from bleaching issues. Some of you may remember I had a heater OFF malfunction back in march while on vacation which my tank sitter never noticed. Lost a couple corals and bleached a few as a result. Two specifically were pretty badly bleached and I wondered about their ability to survive. One was a colony of giant brown/green palythoa (the 1-2" ones everyone sees around here) and the other was orange crush acan.

While my corals are all currently hanging out in the basement I've been keeping an eye on these two. I thought it was very interesting how there was no progress at all in their recovery from bleaching for almost 3 months, they looked the same every day. I was just happy they weren't getting any worse. Then all of a sudden, a few days ago I came home from work, and noticed the acan was fully colored-up. Very strange. In a matter of maybe 16 hours it went from looking badly bleached to fully recovered. And then yesterday, the palythoa did the same exact thing. Came home, looked at it and wow, looks all-better.

This is my first and only experience with corals recovering from a bleaching event. Does this jive with what any of the rest of you have experienced, or has it been more gradual for the rest of you?

 

[Jacwil]

Mike you haven't changed anything re: your husbandry or dosing regime etc? Very cool!! Crazy that both are showing signs of recovering at basically the same time!

 

[Capt_Cully]

Can't speak too intelligently (on anything really), but certainly not acans. With SPS, I NEVER give up. I've seen corals regrow from a single polyp into healthy colonies, despite being on the brink from bleaching or RTN. Even if they succumb, something I learned from Gary, just leave em in place. New coral growing on old coral skeletons encrusted with corraline, creates a more natural looking reef.

Sort of tangential to your query/comments.