Coral Reefs are made up of many different varieties of corals each
having a different color and shape.
Corals are polyps and they are similar to sea anemones. They have small fleshy bodies with a stinging
tentacle ring on top used to catch small animals and use them as their
food. They are different from anemones
because they form skeletons to support themselves by making an individual small
cup of limestone rock where they sit.
Corals divide by budding off into identical twins and they continue
growing and budding year after year until they form huge 
colonies, some up to 500 years old.
Corals are animals but they need light to grow because they have single
plant cells in their bodies used to make sugar.
The coral live in harmony with itself because the plant part produces
sugar and oxygen and the animal part uses it.
The plant cell also uses carbon dioxide and nutrients.
Coral Reefs grow where it is warm
enough, in the middle of the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. They live where the water is shallower so
they can get the sunlight that they need.
Their living conditions are precise and they can’t stand large amounts
of nutrients or sediments, they also like salt water so you won’t find them
living at the mouths of rivers.
When a coral dies it may be reused after
it is ground up into sand as it could fill in cracks and reform into
limestone. But, most of the coral sand
goes on beaches and the color is white, the color of pure limestone. This is the reason that many of the beach’s
sand around the coral seas are white.
The sand could also form an island after it becomes solid across the
tropical seas.