plate coral

[bruce 1]

I had a plate coral. About 6 inches in size a few months back. Well I had a lighting issue and lost most of my LPS including this plate. I took most of the skeletons of the lps out except for a few. That I was going to try to get some mushrooms to attach to. About 2 months ago I noticed a glow of green on my skeleton from my plate. Well now it has dropped off 4 new plates. It makes a new one every few weeks. The skeleton now has 4 new baby plates about the size of a dime. And I have 4 big ones from 2 inches to 4 inches.
Is this common?

 

[bulkrate]

Not unheard of... apparently as a last-ditch effort at survival plate corals can die back almost completely and then spawn a bunch of clones from this little shred of still-living tissue. Effectively becoming "plate coral factories".

If attractively colored, you may have just won the reefing lotto.

There's a few articles on the internet documenting this behavior... you could be looking at 20-odd plates before it's done. Here's the one I was thinking of:

 

[kilralpine]

When they come back from near-dead many times they will look entirely different the second time around. Offen times it will grow back from a few different places as opposed to being a fresh baby that grows from the middle out. I think its because of this many plates that have nearly died spring back and fight for real-estate I guess you could say. Its a big gamble, one I wouldn't recommend forcing upon a plate in any circumstance.

 

[bruce 1]

They are better looking now. They glow it is like a light bulb is in them.
All of the plates come from different places on the skeleton. And when they get a certain size they just drop off.

 

[bulkrate]

Neat! As an aside, I've seen a few people intentionally buy sorry-looking plates at Petco in the hopes of getting one that's about to do just this.

Pics for our enjoyment & perusal?