Articles tagged: bleaching
- Deep dive
Coral heterotrophy and the science of feeding
A deep dive into how much heterotrophy really contributes to a coral — why it has been underestimated, what a coral actually retains from food (nitrogen and fatty acids, not carbon), how digestion works, and how fish excretions feed corals. Recent peer-reviewed research (Communications Biology 2025, Aquaculture Nutrition 2025) and what it means in the aquarium.
- Deep dive
Zooxanthellae and the coral symbiosis
A deep dive into the relationship between a coral and its endosymbiotic algae: the biology and genera of Symbiodiniaceae, nutrient exchange and light-enhanced calcification, regulation of symbiont density, the mechanism of bleaching and the scientific debate around it — and what all of it means in the aquarium.
- Deep dive
Coral Color and Pigments — from GFP proteins to zooxanthellae density
Why corals are colourful, how fluorescent proteins and chromoproteins work, how light and nutrients drive colour, and what bleaching reveals about the pigment system.
- Deep dive
Lighting — zooxanthellae, the Stokes shift and photoacclimation
Cell-level light physiology: zooxanthellae, chlorophyll absorption peaks, the Stokes shift, photoacclimation and photoinhibition.