Plate tree coral

[jdavid]

When I research plate trees, I can't find much info about how they come to be. I know Rit has one at AA, and I have found some older threads on here and reef2reef about Acroholic's plate tree in 2008.

Does a plate coral ever become a plate tree? Can somebody explain this to me?

 

[picoreefguy]

plate trees form in 2 diffrent ways one from spawning and as the larva or whatever you call it turns into a plate there is tissue that is on the "stump" and when the main body breaks off the tissue on the stump grows an new one or the other way is if your plate gets injured or ill and starts to die off and if any tissue survives it grows like a new coral and the same thing with the stump applies. sorry i know its a crude explanation but it works.

 

[1mbrews8]

yup... i have a Mellissa Plate "tree" :O) about 50 baby plates on it currently

 

[bluespot]

Do the babies become trees also eventually or just stay regular plates?

 

[1mbrews8]

they'd be reg plates...

 

[jdavid]

Lol so how do you get this large skeleton that pops off 100's of babies

 

[1mbrews8]

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggiiiiiiiiiccccccccccccc! )
Just luck as far as I know. I'm pretty good at killing $$ coral so had lots of chances lol!

 

[picoreefguy]

mike hit the nail on the head its magic. jk lol honestly its just the luck of the draw. ive read about it and there are processes that you can put your plate through to basicly stress it out really bad and make it die off and supposedly turn it into a plate tree but i wouldnt risk it

 

[picoreefguy]

Atlanta Aquarium;897658 wrote: Figure this out. I had a rock I bought when I got into the hobby. 3 years later it started to produced baby plates. It started with one. 1 years later it started producing 4 plates.
I also had a large bubble coral. A customer bought it. Almost killed it 4 months later. Most of the flesh were gone. there were 3 area where there tiny bit of flesh left on the skeleton. I took it back to the store. 5 baby plates showed up in different area of the skeleton.

we keep trying to say its magic.... come on man get with the program. jk rit thats really weird that plates started growing on a dead bubble coral. maybe you got some plate coral larva in the water of your first coral purchase or something and they have somehow survived in the water and just keep splitting and grow a plate when they land somewhere?