We investigated dynamics between corals and seawater bacterioplankton during the summer of 2013 using aquaria-based experiments at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS). Over the course of 12 days (T0-12, with numbers pertaining to experimental days), static seawater in 30L aquaria tanks were subjected to three conditions: presence or absence of Porites astreoides corals (3 coral tanks numbered 4,5 and 6), presence or absence of P. astreoides mucus (CSM tanks numbered 1, 2 and 3), or no additions (control tanks numbered 7, 8 and 9). For the coral tanks, the experimental corals were placed within tanks at T0, removed from the tanks at day 4, placed back in at day 6 and then removed again at day 10 for the remainder of the experiment. For the CSM tanks, mucus was extracted from P. astreoidescolonies and added to the mucus addition tanks every other day (on day T2, T4, T6, T8 and T10). The control tanks remained neutral throughout the duration of the experiment.