Confused About Corals being exposed to air

[miketeel]

When first learning about reef tanks I was informed by a number of sources that you should never expose corals to air as it will kill them. Yet as I have been exploring coral propogation I've noticed numerious photo's that appear to have corals hard & soft out of the water primarily for gluing.

Can someone point me to the appropriate rules about removing corals from their marine enviroment.

[FragOutpost]

First off Welcome to Frag Outpost.

Actually very few corals can not be exposed to air without advers effects. Some sponges will die if exposed to air. A lot of reefs are exposed for many hours at a time during low tide. Most of the corals that you will see in the aquarium hobby will have no problems at all being exposed to air for up to an hour or so at a time. Ideally you will want to limit the amount of time that a coral is exposed, but the 5-10 minutes that it will take to make some clippings will be no problem.

Give me a few minutes and I will find you a link that shows entire coral reefs in the wild that are exposed to air for many hours everday.

[FragOutpost]

Check out this link that shows entire reefs exposed to air and basking in the sun - http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/eb/index.php

[EvilTwin]

I had wondered this as well, but since i'm not into propogating yet, wasn't too worried yet. I did have to reglue my yellow polyps to some new rocks and figured a short exposure to air wouldn't hurt. They seem to be fine. Thanks for the clarification.

[FragOutpost]

Most soft corals and polyps have the ability to produce a slime like substance to coat themselves with that will slow the drying out process.

Another way to think about it is that anything that is in your tank has already at one point in time or another already been exposed to the air at least once during the process of collection/propagation and the various tanks of wholesalers and retailers before it arrived at your tank.