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This may be an advanced question that no one can answer, but I wanted to start a conversation on it. For those of you who have lost an SPS colony (and if you own SPS, you've probably lost some along the way) have you ever noticed that sometimes a dead SPS will be white as bone, and other times the skeleton is green? I'm very curious about this, what causes the green pigment? What is the cause of death or did it contribute to death? Is is an algae? Was it always present and just took advantage when the SPS flesh died?

I have a few corals right now that had been weakened in health by some mysterious event in my tank (I'm leaning towards bad RO/DI water as the cause) and I also lost some SPS corals in this event. Some left a green skeleton behind while most others have survived, but the shaded base of a couple of corals is green now, the same shade of green that the dead skeletons are. I'm keeping a close on these corals to see if they fully rebound in health and the green goes away, or if they continue to decline and eventually die leaving behind a green skeleton.

So, has anyone ever noticed this? Does anyone have any ideas?

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This should be under general discussion as it applies to all stoney corals. The pigmentation is caused by algae living in the coral's skeleton (endolithic), most likely in the genus Ostreobium. They are part of the corals holobiont and transfer the sugers they produce to their host coral. They have been shown to help corals to compensate for or recover from lost zooxanthellae increasing in numbers when the shading zooxanthellae are reduced or lost.

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Here's a few links. You can also do a search with the term "endolithic algae within corals":

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12065035

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/1/75

https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/3107/1/v51n2-167-173.pdf

This one I haven't bought the paper but the fluctuations in pH mentioned in the abstract raises some interesting questions.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002209819290055F

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