Coral?

[CandiBug2]

My mother has had a dead/dried piece of coral for the past 30 years. It's white in color and actually looks like a brain. She gave the coral to me as an ornament to put in my tank. I have it in there now and it looks really pretty, but will this hurt my fish or the chemistry of the water? I do not have any fish yet, but plan on keeping 5 Angelfish and possibly a few corydoras. My tank is 55 gallons.

[pinballqueen]

It can change the chemistry of the water, but it depends on how large the coral is. Coral will raise the ph of your water slightly (in fact, I have used coral purposefully in my tanks when I was keeping high-ph fish to get my 8.1 ph that I wanted) and may have salt and other minerals from the seawater embedded in its folds.

Best thing to do is get a bucket of water and test the parameters of it, then add the coral, and check it a week later to see if the parameters have changed to something undesirable. If it won't work for you, don't put it back in there.

[MrGoodbytes]

The coral will also raise the carbonate hardness of the water with Calcium carbonate. If you want to keep angels and corys, they would probably do better in conditions with lower KH/pH.

Graeme

[Tetratastic]

I have had a piece of mushroom coral as well as bits of barnacle in a tank with tetras and cories for years now, and have not had a problem with these types of fish.

I agree with pinballqueen about testing the water beforehand, just keep an eye on the water parameters and see how it goes. :)