[Coral-List] Pink secretion on dead corals

albert albert at ecology.su.se
Tue Jul 19 23:20:12 EDT 2005


Greetings listers,

I am currently working on a larval settlement experiment. In my set-up I'm 
using dead coral oroigniating from six different species as natural 
substrate. The substrate is prepared from a few colonies of living coral 
which are cut into smaller fragments and cleaned of living tisue (using a 
high pressure air-blower and water pick)

The problem is that in many cases a pink layer (mucus?) develops over the 
substrate (often seeping out into the surrounding water) that seems to be 
toxic to the larvae in each replicate. Substrate originating from porites 
lutea and pachyseris speciosa is giving us the greatest problems. My guess 
is that it's a cyanobacteria/fungus causing this (maybe the same as in the 
reported pink line syndrome). Anybody have any ideas?

Albert Norstrom
Department of Systems Ecology
Stockholm University



More information about the Coral-List mailing list