Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Torch 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
Torch 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?

  • A brown, jelly-like slime spreading over the head (“brown jelly”) — act immediately: remove the colony, cut away affected tissue, dip it, and improve water quality; it can consume a torch in days.
  • Tentacles staying retracted/deflated — too much flow, an alkalinity swing, or stress; ease flow and check chemistry.
  • Receding flesh / exposed skeleton — a chemistry swing or too much light too fast.

🚗 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 skeleton with long, individually-tipped “torch” tentacles; prized colour morphs.
Lighting
Low–moderate — about 50–150 PAR.
Water flow
Low-to-moderate, gentle and indirect. Torch polyps stay retracted or tear in too-strong flow.
Placement
Lower-to-mid rock or sand, gentle flow — and give it MORE space than other Euphyllia: keep it well clear of all other corals (it can sting even other Euphyllia).
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. Torches are especially unhappy with swings.
Feeding
Largely photosynthetic; a subdued eater that takes the occasional meaty morsel — don't overfeed.
Growth & spread
Adds heads over time; slower and pricier than frogspawn, so most keepers grow it as a treasured colony.
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?