Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Montipora 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
Montipora — 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?

  • Tissue receding or a bleaching white edge — usually an alkalinity swing or too much light too fast.
  • Pale or brown colour — light (too little, or not yet acclimated) or nutrients off.
  • A bare patch under a plate — detritus settled where flow doesn't reach; increase/randomise flow and baste it clean.
  • Rapid tissue loss (peeling) — a parameter swing; check alkalinity first and fix stability.

🚗 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
Grows as plates, encrusting sheets or branches (species-dependent); many types grow fast and spread.
Lighting
Moderate to high — start a new frag around 125–150 PAR and raise slowly to ≈200–300 PAR over a few weeks. More Montipora are lost to too much light too fast than to too little, so acclimate; encrusting/lower forms are happy at the lower end.
Water flow
Strong with some randomness — enough to keep detritus from settling on plates (which causes tissue loss underneath). Avoid one harsh direct jet on plating forms.
Placement
Once acclimated, mid-to-upper rock in good flow; give encrusting and plating types room, because they spread and can grow over neighbours. Baste detritus off plates if flow lets it settle.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
SPS build a dense stony skeleton and punish parameter swings far harder than LPS — keep alkalinity (≈8–11 dKH), calcium (≈400–450 ppm) and magnesium (≈1300–1400 ppm) rock-stable and test weekly. With SPS, stability beats any exact number.
Feeding
Mostly photosynthetic — no target-feeding needed. It benefits from the usual reef “food in the water” (amino acids, small zooplankton, a fed fish population); don't overfeed chasing colour.
Growth & spread
Fast for an SPS — some Montipora grow enough to overtake tank space and shade slower corals. 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?