I'm new and Coral Lifespan

[Wellsoman22]

Hi everyone! I'm new here and just wanted to get a feel for the forum and tell you a little bit about my tank-self :) I've been in the hobby for less than a year, got my very first tank set up in April 2012! It's a 92 gallon corner (reef ready of course) with a 250w MH fixture with actinics and moonlight LEDs. I have an Octopus 1000sss skimmer and about 100 lbs live rock that keep things going swimmingly [I'm so clever ;)] The fish I have are, in order of addition: a canary wrasse, royal gramma, two ocellaris clowns, tomini tang, McCosker's flasher wrasse, and three Allen's damsels (if you've never heard of them, they're actually really peaceful and a beautiful metallic, bright blue!) I have a green bubble tip anemone for the clowns, a beautiful blue maxima clam (turquoise looking down and purple looking straight on that I got two days ago), a hermit crab CUC, one peppermint shrimp, and two scarlet skunk cleaner shrimps to name everything but corals. For corals I have an orange branching digitada, a 5-head firecracker frag, a pretty blue with orange eyes chalice (only about an inch), some bird's nest, some xenia and zoanthids (both of which are becoming real pests which I would love to get rid of), torch coral, a really cool orange pavona cactus and now the big three... my favorites! I have a favia colony that I absolutely adore that has bright green eyes with purple and blue. have a really nice lime green scoly with a bit of red and orange. My absolute favorite is my wellsophyllia brain... it's a gorgeous bright red with a turquoise mouth area and some turquoise splattering on the red. I am in love with my tank and I hope I can get some pics up :) now I do have a question: how long can corals live in captivity? What's the longest anyone's heard of? If I could keep a coral alive as long as I'm living that would be the coolest thing ever!

[Xadieu]

Welcome to reef central!! Not mean to hi jack your post but I am new to RC as well. Glad to be here and looking forward to meeting new people here!

[Wellsoman22]

Hehe you're probably wondering why this is in the LPS forum sorry... I forgot to mention that LPS are my addiction and that the question was mainly directed toward LPS :P sorry if this seemed spammy

[rogersb]

I have never heard of a coral having a lifespan and have been assuming they can live pretty much as long as conditions are good for them. The only problem with long life is that they also never stop growing so you could run out of room or have corals fighting each other as they grow. Welcome to the forums.

[cracker642]

Same here saw a pic of a 500 year old coral (at least that is what caption said) the divers were swiming around it had to he size of garage is was huge

[SantaMonica]

Interestingly, with most corals, most of the coral is dead skeleton; only the outer/top portions are alive and growing

[herostar]

I've had the same piece of frogspawn since I started keeping reefs about 8 years ago. Ocassionally a head will die, sometimes I frag a few heads off to trade for other stuff, but I would expect it to keep on doing well as long as it gets light and a little food now and then. The same goes for a leather, some mushrooms, and some zoas that I purchased at the same time.

[kurt_n]

In theory, a coral should be able to outlive you if you give it the conditions it needs. A lot of things can get in the way of that though... disease/hitchikers coming in on new acquisitions; equipment failure that pukes nasty stuff into your tank; tank sitters that thing they're helping you out when you're on vacation. You get the idea.

As others said, if you give it what it wants, it will soon outgrow your tank. But keep it pruned up, passing on the frag goodness to others, and there's no reason you can't keep at least a part of the original coral as long as you keep your tank.

[zachfishman]

The lifespan of Scleractinia is still not well-understood. We can estimate the ages of large colonies, and can observe and calculate averages of shorter-lived varieties (like staghorn coral), but none of these answer whether these colonies die of "old age." At least in our observations (I used to work as a research assistant), colonies were lost to disease, being out competed by ther benthic orgs, died from beaching stress, etc.

Here's a quickie by the FWC: http://myfwc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1120/~/coral---how-long-does-it-live%3F