Plate Coral Reproducing?

[laeru]

so i guess i just can't keep a plate coral. this is the third one that I've been through. 2 of them were long tentacled and one of them was a short tentacled plate. they look good for like 2 weeks then they begin to slowly die. all of my parameters always check out good and all my other corals look great. i think it might be my diamond goby dropping sand on them but i am not 100% sure. but anyways, I've heard that when they die they produce more plates??? has this ever happened to anyone before?

 

[mc524]

Have any shrimp? What are you feeding it?

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[sleepyreef]

My plate coral died a few months ago and now there appears to be about 20 little baby plate corals on the dead one's skeleton. They are really slow growing.

 

[laeru]

MC524;924202 wrote: Have any shrimp? What are you feeding it?

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i have 1 cleaner shrimp 1 blood shrimp and a few peppermint shrimp. i feed him krill which he ate occasionally but spit it out most of the time.

 

[mc524]

You now likely know the reason why they are not staying alive. Shrimp will pick at plates. I lost an orange plate to my shrimp. They would pick at it when i fed it. I now have 3 plates, no shrimp, and the plates are doing great.
When i target feed with LRS Fish Frenzy, the plates go crazy and gobble it up.

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[laeru]

MC524;924223 wrote: You now likely know the reason why they are not staying alive. Shrimp will pick at plates. I lost an orange plate to my shrimp. They would pick at it when i fed it. I now have 3 plates, no shrimp, and the plates are doing great.
When i target feed with LRS Fish Frenzy, the plates go crazy and gobble it up.

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oh no. i really love all of my shrimp. is there anything else i could possibly do to keep them?

 

[mc524]

I've seen shrimp and plates coexist. You may have to cover the plate while feeding. That way you can keep the shrimp away while the plate is vulnerable. My shrimp would actually pull food from deep inside the mouth of that orange plate. I banished them to the sump after that.

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[jennm]

I've kept shrimp with Fungia in lots of tanks. The shrimp will scavenge on dead/dying tissue, but I seriously doubt they are the cause of the corals' death.

Heliofungia - long-tentacled plates, are more difficult to keep, and if they get damaged, they're done. Fungia or Cyclocyris (short tentacled plates) are much more durable, and I've seen Fungia survive awful conditions and one even survived a Rio pump meltdown. It closed up tight for about 2 weeks and looked totally dead, but knowing that the skeletons sometimes produce offspring, I left it there, and eventually it opened back up. It had been in that tank 9 years as of the last time I saw it - it could still be there now.

When sand sifting gobies drop sand or shells, that can irritate and injure the coral - it certainly would injure a Heliofungia. Fungia are usually a bit more resilient and they can sort of inflate and deflate to sweep the sand off, but if it continues constantly, it can and will stress the coral right to death.

Jenn