Is This Plate Doomed?

[RonS]

Got this plate at the big SPS meeting this fall. It was full and beautiful, and it thrive for a while in my tank.

Then I experienced a few setbacks, and it started getting unhappy. The final straw was when it went a week without ATO and my SG hit 1.028.

I had basically written it off. it’s been shriveled like this for over a month.
But over the last few days, it started coming back. I was so excited!!!

...and then there’s the “buuut...”

while it was shrunken back, some mystery Zoas started popping out on the sections where the flesh had retreated.

so, what should I do? Let nature takes it’s course? Or, do you think the plate will come back, and so I should rip the Zoas off the base? At this size, do you think they would survive a transplant onto a plug?

thoughts appreciated!!

—Ron

 

[thereefster2004]

I think those are baby plates not zoas

 

[jcook54]

Yep. I think you might have a plate coral "tree". Sometimes when they get really damaged and start to die, you'll get tons of little baby plates that pop out of the exposed ribs in the skeleton. For years I'd only ever seen pictures and heard about them but @bhodges82 has 2 of the things and the entire bottom of his tank is covered with fungia's of all different sizes. Again, I've never had one but they don't ever seem to repair themselves back into a whole plate. Instead, they keep popping out little plates to the point where they're almost invasive. The picture you posted isn't terrific but I really do think that's what you've got going on. Take a real close look and I'll bet you'll see that they are in fact tiny fungia's. Very cool!

Edit: Google "plate coral babies" and you'll see quite a few examples. They always pop out between what appear to be dead skeletal ribs.

 

[RonS]

Trying to see if I can post a better picture...

 

[jcook54]

Oh ya, it's a goner. Tell you what, I'll gladly do you a favor and take it off your hands, try to nurse it back to health and I won't even charge you for it. Let me help you out man, I'm a nice guy like that.

Seriously though, I suppose some sort of polyp or zoa could have grown up on to it but there doesn't appear to be anything around it. Plus, any sort of polyp or zoa would be in one spot and spread slowly away from there. The only thing I can think it would be is baby plates. They start off looking like little dots between the ribs, grow into what look like tiny little anemone's and then little tiny copies of the parent plate. I believe the babies are called anthocalli (sp?) or something like that. Where the heck is @bhodges82 when you need him. I can't imagine that he has anything better to do on a Friday night.

 

[RonS]

Wow - I think you may be right! The "babies" all seem very regular (as in, same number of regularly spaced "tentacles", etc), and the color doesn't really resemble the parent, so I thought they were Zoas. Just assumed they had gotten on the skeleton in the seller's tank, and were able to develop since they now had access to light. Pretty naive/dumb now that I think about it, but I didn't have another explanation.

I'll keep an eye on them. I read that they are pretty easy to remove once they reach a certain size, so hopefully I'll have frags to get rid of at some point : )

Thank you for the input!!

--Ron

 

[bhodges82]

That is a plate tree for sure. Keep it happy and it'll look like this one day.

 

[RonS]

Wow - that's amazing!! Thank you for the confirmation : )