I think my Nikon has a setting where you could take a shot every X number of seconds, up to 30 seconds. This time scale might be too short for you, depending on what you are trying to do.
One of the weirder cases of time lapse I have seen was in a NIN video, where there was an animal they showed decomposing. I fully expect that, in this case, a camera was set up and left in place, and one photo per day (or so) was taken. This would probably have been done manually.
Given the right system, you could probably put a camera with a roll film back on it into some sort of enclosure, then use a timing device hooked up to the remote shutter trigger to take a photo every few minutes/hours or days, depending on what you were trying to do.
While I would love to do a coral growth sequence, I cannot imagine that the wife would allow me to keep the camera/tripod set up in front of the tank for the month or so it would take...
