Sorry to hear about your coral death. My first guess (and that's all it is) is that your coral starved to death. It may have been in an area where a water current vortex may have prevented it from capturing any food. Or your tank conditions may have been such that the coral was sometimes feeding, sometimes not, going on reserve energy and finally couldn't recover.
I actually think we have quite a ways to go before we fully understand keeping healthy, thriving corals long term.
There are a number of things that we can't quantify yet:
-we really don't know when carbon needs changing, so we could have chemical warfare happening without our realizing it
-we can't tell if a coral is getting the proper flow so it can effectively capture food
-it's hard to tell if we are supplying the coral with the correct and sufficient food
-are the little things like leached toxic chemicals really affecting our coral's health?(why wouldn't it? I know some disagree with me)
What was it, 15 years ago that it seemed almost impossible to keep SPS?
Now we're playing around with coral colours and bacteria driven nutrient management.
I'm probably not being much help here, but I do think that these things matter. We have no real way yet of determining whether we are taking care of every coral in our tank requirements.
If your water parameters and lighting are good, I would suggest to do some more research on the subject of coral feeding.
Mitch
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