Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Candy Cane Coral Coral Trouble Card

The one page to have ready when a coral starts to slip. Corals almost never need a vet — recovery is a water-chemistry, light/flow, or pest fix. This walks you through the checks in order. Print it, keep it by the tank.

Black & white saves ink and prints cleanly on any printer.

Not sure it's serious yet? Run the symptom checker or the water-test checker first — many worries turn out to be a husbandry fix.

Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care · coralkin.com
Candy Cane Coral — Coral Trouble Card

🔬 There's no vet for corals — diagnose the water & environment

Corals almost never need (or have) a vet. A struggling colony is a chemistry, lighting/flow, or pest problem you fix yourself. Work these Coralkin tools:

📇 Fill this in now

My system
What I'm seeing
Recent changes

🚨 Trouble signs now?

  • Heads not inflating — usually too much flow, or a parameter issue.
  • Receding tissue or exposed skeleton between heads — a chemistry swing or a brown-jelly-type infection; check water.
  • Pale or bleaching — too much light.

🚗 First things to check

✅ Do

  • Test the full parameter set — salinity, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, phosphate and temperature — and compare to targets.
  • Check the lighting and flow at this coral's exact spot.
  • Look for pests and for irritation from aggressive neighbours.
  • Check for recent changes — new livestock, a dosing change, a big water change.

⛔ Don't

  • Don't reach for OTC “cures” or dose blindly.
  • Don't change everything at once — stability matters more than any single number.
  • Don't keep a badly-failing colony next to healthy ones without isolating it or fragging off the healthy tissue.

📋 This coral's targets

Colony / form
Branching stalks, each topped by a round striped head; multiplies by budding new heads.
Lighting
Low to moderate — around 50–70 PAR (30–150 acceptable). Not a bright-light coral.
Water flow
Low to moderate, indirect — enough to keep detritus off, not enough to stop the heads inflating.
Placement
Lower rock or the sand bed; give the heads room to inflate and to add new ones.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
LPS build a stony skeleton — keep alkalinity (≈8–11 dKH), calcium (≈400–450 ppm) and magnesium (≈1300–1450 ppm) stable.
Feeding
Photosynthetic PLUS meaty spot-feeding (mysis, small pieces) 2–3× a week — it feeds at night, and feeding drives new heads.
Growth & spread
Steady — buds new heads and fills out into a dense colony; easy to frag.
Natural range
Indo-Pacific.

🌸 A struggling coral is almost always telling you about its water, light, flow, or a pest — not an infection a vet can treat. Stabilise your parameters to target, confirm the light and flow suit this coral, and rule out pests and aggressive neighbours before changing anything drastic. Sudden swings are themselves a stressor.

❓ Work through

  • Is a parameter off-target?
  • Is the light or flow wrong for this coral?
  • Any pests, or aggressive neighbours?
  • What changed recently?