melev

Years ago, I got this coral from a local vendor that was about to open for business. It's a beautiful maze coral that has done well or poorly as things happened with water quality. It was plagued with cyano that refused to go away, to the point that I was ready to write it off. When it was down to less than 20% life, it suddenly decided to reverse course and heal. It took nearly a year to fully recover to the point you couldn't tell it ever looked bad.

When the tank leaked a year ago, this coral was beautiful but over the past half year it looked worse and worse. Unsure what was doing the damage, but blaming the tangs I left it alone. My rule is never give up on coral DNA, as you only need a tiny bit to restart the process anew. Well, this time the coral was definitely at death's door with maybe 2% real life left, with most of the tissue nearly eradicated from the stony foundation.

For the past few days, I've watched this coral begin to puff up and it will once again recover. It's going to take a long time, but since we have a lengthy history together, I'm happy to continue to care for it.

These patchy areas are going to have to fill in a lot of empty space. But I know it will.

Here's the same coral in March 2011

And April 2010

As you can see, I'm not willing to walk away from such a beauty, but it's going to be a slow recovery until it resembles what it did three years ago.