Minecraft Coral Reef: Everything You Need to Know (2024)

Coral is a block and also a group of blocks that can be quite confusing. You can only find them in only one Minecraft biome, and the different variants can be difficult to grasp, especially if you are new to the game. So, this guide will help you fully understand all coral blocks, find them easily in your Minecraft world, and also use them in several ways. With that said, let’s begin!

Coral, Coral Blocks, and Coral Fans Explained

There are a total of three variants of coral blocks in the game:

• Coral
• Coral blocks
• Coral fans

Coral blocks are the most obvious one out of these coral variants. They are full solid blocks. Unlike the other two variants, wondering traders have a chance to sell coral blocks for 3 emeralds.

Coral is the block whose appearance most truthfully represents the coral from the real world. They are non-solid blocks that have very unique textures and shapes.

Coral fans are smaller than coral and are also non-solid blocks.

All of these blocks have their own five variants, which simply include different textures and colors. These variants are:

• Tube (blue)
• Brain (pink)
• Bubble (magenta)
• Fire (red)
• Horn (yellow)

All of these variants again have one more variant, which is the dead variant. The living coral blocks are vibrant and colorful, whereas the dead variants are completely gray. You can turn the living coral blocks into dead ones but not the other way around. To keep coral alive or to kill it, check out the section below.

Where to Find Coral in Minecraft

Coral block variants all generate as part of coral reefs. These organic features only appear in warm oceans. These oceans have a teal tint to their surface and are generally attached to other warm biomes such as deserts, savannas, and mangrove swamps. The warm ocean biomes usually contain coral reefs, though you may come across some that have none.

Coral reefs are truly one of the most beautiful parts of the terrain generation in this game. All the living variants of coral are present here, so colors are fairly vibrant and welcoming. In the Bedrock edition, the dead corals generate naturally as well, so there is some natural balance.

You’ll also find lots of tropical fish swimming about here, as well as an occasional pufferfish. This location is home to sea pickles too, so if haven’t grabbed them yet, you have the chance to do so.

Coral blocks are the only variants that are not renewable. You can easily create more of the coral and coral fan blocks (see section below), but the full solid coral blocks are only obtainable from the natural generation in warm oceans.

How to Break and Collect Coral

To obtain any living coral variant, you need to have a pickaxe of any tier with the silk touch Minecraft enchantment. You may get it through the enchanting table or by using enchanted books.

Either way, when you break any living coral block with this tool, the coral will break and drop in item form. Coral and coral fans break instantly, whereas coral blocks take a second even with a netherite efficiency V pickaxe.

Breaking living coral blocks with a non-silk touch pickaxe will yield dead coral blocks. On the other hand, breaking coral and coral fans this way will yield nothing. If you’re breaking dead coral blocks, you don’t need silk touch on your pickaxe. But you will need this enchantment to break and collect dead coral and dead coral fans.

How to Keep Coral Alive in Minecraft

If you want to keep coral alive so it retains its gorgeous colors, you’ll need to place it attached to or inside water sources of flowing water.

Full coral blocks need to have water directly attached to them, while coral and coral fans can have water right next to them or they can be completely waterlogged.

Furthermore, it’s possible to keep a coral alive as long as a waterlogged block is attached to them. This means you have a lot more freedom than you think. Waterlogged stairs, slabs, leaves, as well as other similar blocks will all provide water to coral, even though the coral is not directly touching the water.

How to Farm Coral and Coral Fans

Coral and coral fans in Minecraft behave as plants, so you can use bone meal to farm them. If you throw the bone meal on dirt, coarse dirt, sand, red sand, gravel, or clay underwater in warm ocean biomes, in addition to seagrass, you’ll occasionally get coral and coral fans. This is not possible in any other ocean biome.

The same is true if you bone meal living or dead coral blocks underwater in the warm ocean biomes. Not only that, you’re guaranteed to get coral fans if you bone meal one of the four sides of living or dead coral blocks in this biome, as they will generate as wall coral fans.

Uses of Coral in Minecraft

Coral block variants are primarily used as building and decorative blocks. They don’t have any special mechanics, apart from coral blocks being necessary for farming sea pickles. However, these beautiful blocks don’t need any other use, as they are simply so unique.

Minecraft creator GoodTimesWithScar on YouTube actually uses coral fans all the time as flowers, as their textures and colors are just much better than regular flowers.

But, don’t forget about the dead coral block variants either, as they can also be great building blocks too. First of all, they’re easier to place and use without worrying about contact with water.

Due to their gray colors, they go very well with cobblestone, basalt, andesite, and other gray blocks. Moreover, coral fans can be placed on the top face of blocks or sides, so there are many decorative opportunities with them.

The most technical use of coral variants is in building TNT dupers. The dead coral fans have that specific use that takes advantage of their side placing and the ability to be pushed by pistons. So, that’s why you’ll definitely need to acquire them in case you want to play around with explosions.

Now you know where to find coral blocks, what coral variants there are, how to keep coral alive, how to farm coral and coral fans. So, if this guide proved useful for you, don’t forget to share it with your friends or server mates. Also, do let us know in the comments what coral variant is your favorite.