Birdsnest coral out of water for 7 hours

[Les Poissons]

So I messed up last night… I decided to do a broadcast feed of my tank (which I do about 3x per week), and for some reason I turned off the return pump instead of using feed mode on my hydros. I guess I wanted to let the food swirl in the tank longer than the 15 minute feed mode on my Hydros controller and I got lazy and didn’t just make a longer time out.

Anyway, I planned to set a 25 minute timer but got distracted. No timer set and fell asleep. Unfortunately I got a rare night of solid sleep until I jolted awake 7 hours after I stopped the pump. The net result was the tips of my large birdsnest colony being out of the water the entire time (normally they are right at the surface. They have weathered an hour out of water before, but nothing like this.

So, any bets on the outcome? The colony grows like a weed, so no matter what I think all will end up fine. But how long can birdsnest corals survive without any water? Anyone have experience?

Fortunately all other corals were below waterline and the wavemakers were running. Here are a couple pics. I’ll try to update as time passes.

 

[brandon429]

In first: prediction- they make it.

 

[Troylee]

It will be fine.. I had some sps encrusted to rocks that were out of water completely for 7 hours I was hoping they died and nope they took off when I transferred tanks haha!

 

[Les Poissons]

it’s pretty angry right now, but I think there’s a good chance of survival, especially since the lights were off. One way another it will grow back.

Definitely a little disappointed in myself for not using feed mode. I strongly believe automation is the way to go. No matter how disciplined, at some point manual processes will fall victim to human error.