The mass of horizontal and vertical downwards oriented juvenile Caryophyllia (Caryophyllia) huinayensis was determined during a 12-week sediment experiment. Corals were exposed to a natural (0.0042 ml/l), a 100-fold and a 1000-fold sediment concentration. The mass of the individual corals was measured at the beginning (week 0), in the middle (week 6) and at the end (week 12) of the experiment. The mass of the individuals was determined using the buoyant weight method (Davies, 1989) and by calculating the skeletal mass in air after Jokiel et al. (1978). From this, the increase in mg per day and year for the individuals were determined.

This dataset was generated within the framework of the co-operation between the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (programme: 'Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future', Topic 4.2), the Huinay Scientific Field Station, European Union's Horizon 2020 iAtlantic project (Grant Agreement No. 818123) and the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences of the University of Bremen.