Coral Block

A coral block is a solid block that comes in five variants: tube, brain, bubble, fire, and horn.

A dead coral block is a dead variant of a coral block. These blocks are always grey.

Obtaining

Breaking

Coral blocks can be obtained only with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch; if mined with a pickaxe not enchanted with Silk Touch, they drop the respective dead coral block. Dead coral blocks can be obtained with any type of pickaxe.

Block	Coral Block
Hardness	1.5
Tool
Breaking time^[A]
Default	7.5
Wooden	1.15
Stone	0.6
Iron	0.4
Diamond	0.3
Netherite	0.25
Golden	0.2

↑ Times are for unenchanted tools as wielded by players with no status effects, measured in seconds. For more information, see Breaking § Speed.

Natural generation

Coral blocks and their dead variants‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} naturally generate in coral reef structures, which can be found in warm oceans.

Trading

Coral blocks can be bought from wandering traders for 3 emeralds each.

Usage

North

East

South

West

Example

Schematic of valid block placements for coral blocks
with water around. Several ways are shown where the
arrangement would cause coral blocks to stay alive
or die.

Coral blocks and their dead variants can be used for building or as decoration blocks.

Sea pickle farm blocks

If sea pickles are planted on coral blocks, using bone meal on the sea pickles increases the number of sea pickles and creates more sea pickles on nearby coral blocks. Specifically, they can spread to the original sea pickle's level or one level below, out to a horizontal taxicab distance of 2. This only works on living coral blocks, not dead coral blocks.

Dead coral blocks

In order for a coral block to stay alive, at least one of the six directly adjacent blocks must be water or a waterlogged block. If placed outside of water, it transforms into its respective dead coral block after a few seconds — a grayscale version of the coral block. A coral block still dies if the game rule randomTickSpeed is set to 0.^[1]

Note Blocks

All types of coral blocks and dead coral block can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass drum" sounds.

Sounds

Normal (Alive)

Java Edition:

Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
Block broken	Blocks	Once the block has broken	`block.coral_block.break`	`subtitles.block.generic.break`	1.0	0.8	16
Block placed	Blocks	When the block is placed	`block.coral_block.place`	`subtitles.block.generic.place`	1.0	0.8	16
Block breaking	Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	`block.coral_block.hit`	`subtitles.block.generic.hit`	0.25	0.5	16
None^{[sound 1]}	Entity-Dependent	Falling on the block with fall damage	`block.coral_block.fall`	None^{[sound 1]}	0.5	0.75	16
Footsteps	Entity-Dependent	Walking on the block	`block.coral_block.step`	`subtitles.block.generic.footsteps`	0.15	1.5	16

↑ ^a ^b MC-177082

Bedrock Edition:

Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
Blocks	Once the block has broken	`dig.coral`	1.0	0.8-1.0
Blocks	When the block is placed	`dig.coral`	1.0	0.8-1.0
Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	`hit.coral`	0.3	0.5
Players	Falling on the block with fall damage	`fall.coral`	0.4	1.0
Players	Walking on the block	`step.coral`	0.15	1.0
Players	Jumping from the block	`jump.coral`	0.12	1.0
Players	Falling on the block without fall damage	`land.coral`	0.14	1.0

Dead

Java Edition:

Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
Block broken	Blocks	Once the block has broken	`block.stone.break`	`subtitles.block.generic.break`	1.0	0.8	16
Block placed	Blocks	When the block is placed	`block.stone.place`	`subtitles.block.generic.place`	1.0	0.8	16
Block breaking	Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	`block.stone.hit`	`subtitles.block.generic.hit`	0.25	0.5	16
None^{[sound 1]}	Entity-Dependent	Falling on the block with fall damage	`block.stone.fall`	None^{[sound 1]}	0.5	0.75	16
Footsteps	Entity-Dependent	Walking on the block	`block.stone.step`	`subtitles.block.generic.footsteps`	0.15	1.0	16

↑ ^a ^b MC-177082

Bedrock Edition:

Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
Blocks	Once the block has broken	`dig.stone`	1.0	0.8-1.0
Blocks	When the block is placed	`dig.stone`	1.0	0.8-1.0
Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	`hit.stone`	0.37	0.5
Players	Falling on the block with fall damage	`fall.stone`	0.4	1.0
Players	Walking on the block	`step.stone`	0.3	1.0
Players	Jumping from the block	`jump.stone`	0.12	1.0
Players	Falling on the block without fall damage	`land.stone`	0.22	1.0

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Form	Block tags	Translation key
Tube Coral Block	`tube_coral_block`	Block & Item	`coral_blocks`	`block.minecraft.tube_coral_block`
Brain Coral Block	`brain_coral_block`	Block & Item	`coral_blocks`	`block.minecraft.brain_coral_block`
Bubble Coral Block	`bubble_coral_block`	Block & Item	`coral_blocks`	`block.minecraft.bubble_coral_block`
Fire Coral Block	`fire_coral_block`	Block & Item	`coral_blocks`	`block.minecraft.fire_coral_block`
Horn Coral Block	`horn_coral_block`	Block & Item	`coral_blocks`	`block.minecraft.horn_coral_block`
Dead Tube Coral Block	`dead_tube_coral_block`	Block & Item	None	`block.minecraft.dead_tube_coral_block`
Dead Brain Coral Block	`dead_brain_coral_block`	Block & Item	None	`block.minecraft.dead_brain_coral_block`
Dead Bubble Coral Block	`dead_bubble_coral_block`	Block & Item	None	`block.minecraft.dead_bubble_coral_block`
Dead Fire Coral Block	`dead_fire_coral_block`	Block & Item	None	`block.minecraft.dead_fire_coral_block`
Dead Horn Coral Block	`dead_horn_coral_block`	Block & Item	None	`block.minecraft.dead_horn_coral_block`

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Numeric ID	Form	Item ID^{[i 1]}	Translation key
Coral Blocks	`coral_block`	`387`	Block & Giveable Item^{[i 2]}	Identical^{[i 3]}	`tile.coral_block.blue.name` `tile.coral_block.pink.name` `tile.coral_block.purple.name` `tile.coral_block.red.name` `tile.coral_block.yellow.name` `tile.coral_block.blue_dead.name` `tile.coral_block.pink_dead.name` `tile.coral_block.purple_dead.name` `tile.coral_block.red_dead.name` `tile.coral_block.yellow_dead.name`

↑ ID of block's direct item form, which is used in savegame files and addons.
↑ Available with /give command.
↑ The block's direct item form has the same id as the block.

Block states

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Metadata Bits	Default value	Allowed values	Values for Metadata Bits	Description
coral_color	`0x1` `0x2` `0x4`	`blue`	`blue`	`0`	Tube Coral Block
			`pink`	`1`	Brain Coral Block
			`purple`	`2`	Bubble Coral Block
			`red`	`3`	Fire Coral Block
			`yellow`	`4`	Horn Coral Block
dead_bit	`0x8`	`false`	`false` `true`	`0` `1`	Whether or not this coral block is dead.

History

This section is missing information about when something about coral slabs not being added mentioned by a dev.

Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.

Java Edition Classic
May 21, 2009			Notch expresses interest in a suggestion regarding corals by user "solarblade".
Java Edition Alpha
June 28, 2010			Notch mentioned on his blog: "I tried adding corals, but it's really hard to draw a single block that looks like corals, since it's really more about crazy amounts of variation and diversity. But I do know that the corals will have tiny fish particles around them."
Java Edition
October 5, 2012			Coral were jokingly teased in the fake snapshot 12marc40awesome, along with fish mobs and "fish blocks".
November 18, 2017			Coral were shown in a clip at MINECON Earth.
November 18, 2017			Yellow coral, red coral, blue coral, and dead coral were shown (only one variant at the time), and in the clip slab variants of coral were shown as well, although they were not implemented.
1.13	18w09a		Added coral.
	18w09a		Added dead coral.
	18w10a		The textures of all coral have been changed.
	18w10b		The single dead coral has been replaced with five dead coral as a solution to MC-126564.
	18w10b		Dead coral in worlds before this update now stop existing when the world is updated.
	18w10d		Added coral reefs, allowing coral to generate naturally.
	18w14b		What was previously named "Coral" has been renamed to "Coral Blocks", and what was previously named "Coral Plants" have been renamed to "Coral".
	18w14b		The blue, pink, purple, red, and yellow variants of all coral blocks and dead coral blocks have been renamed to tube, brain, bubble, fire, and horn, respectively.
	18w16a		Mining coral blocks now requires Silk Touch to drop them.
			Coral blocks now have a short delay before dying.
			Coral blocks no longer die as long as one side is touching water.
	pre6		Living coral blocks now have new sound events: `block.coral_block.break`, `block.coral_block.fall`, `block.coral_block.hit`, `block.coral_block.place`, and `block.coral_block.step`.
1.14	19w05a		Added wandering traders, which sell all types of coral blocks, making them renewable.
Bedrock Edition
1.4.0	beta 1.2.14.2		Added coral blocks.
			Coral blocks currently die only if they touch air or void blocks, meaning that coral technically do not need water to stay alive.
			Added dead coral blocks.
1.5.0	beta 1.5.0.4		Coral blocks no longer die as long as one side is touching water.
1.10.0	beta 1.10.0.3		Coral blocks can now be bought from wandering traders.
1.10.0	beta 1.10.0.3		The texture of horn coral blocks has been changed to look the same as Java Edition's texture.
1.16.0	?		When buying from wandering traders, one emerald now purchases one coral block instead of three of the same type.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69	1.76	Patch 38	Added coral blocks.
TU69	1.76	Patch 38	Added dead coral blocks.
Education Edition
1.4.0			^[verify] Added coral blocks.
1.4.0			Added dead coral blocks.

Issues

Issues relating to "Coral Block" or "Dead Coral Block" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

After players had placed 10 million coral blocks underwater in Bedrock Edition, Mojang donated US$100,000 to The Nature Conservancy to protect and restore coral reefs around the world.^[2]