Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Mushroom 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
Mushroom 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?

  • Staying shrunken or curled (“clam-shelling”) — usually too much light or flow; move it lower and shadier.
  • Detaching and drifting — often it's seeking lower light/flow; let it settle somewhere calmer.
  • Losing colour or thinning — check for excess light and keep water stable.

🚗 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
Flat discs that spread into a group as they split; can detach and relocate themselves.
Lighting
Low — Discosoma around 30–50 PAR; Rhodactis a little brighter (≈150–250 PAR). Too much light makes them shrink.
Water flow
Low — keep it gentle (Discosoma especially want very low flow); too much stops them opening fully.
Placement
Lower rockwork or the sand bed, in calmer, shadier spots away from strong light and flow.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
Very forgiving of nutrients and imperfect chemistry — no dosing needed. Keep it stable.
Feeding
Mostly photosynthetic; larger Rhodactis will take an occasional meaty morsel, but they don't need target feeding.
Growth & spread
Spreads on its own — Discosoma by dropping bits of its foot (pedal laceration), Rhodactis by splitting in two (fission). Easy to propagate; not aggressive.
Natural range
Indo-Pacific reefs.

🌸 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?