Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Toadstool Leather 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
Toadstool Leather 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 closed or shedding for more than a few days — a longer shed can signal water quality or irritation; test and check flow.
  • Not reopening, or tissue breaking down at the stalk — a real problem (rot); cut away affected tissue and check water.
  • Nearby corals declining — allelopathy; increase carbon, water changes and spacing.

🚗 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
A stalked cap (capitulum) covered in feeding polyps; grows large and sways in the flow.
Lighting
Moderate to high — adaptable; it opens and colours up across a wide range.
Water flow
Moderate and indirect — enough to sway the cap and keep detritus off it, not a harsh direct jet.
Placement
Mid rock with room around it (it gets big and chemically inhibits neighbours); once attached, it's happiest left put.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
Soft corals don't draw down calcium and alkalinity like stony corals — just keep salinity and the usual reef parameters stable.
Feeding
Mostly photosynthetic; benefits from the general food in the water — no target-feeding needed.
Growth & spread
Fast and hardy — grows large and is easy to propagate (frags from the cap edge).
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?