going to lose third fungia in a row after losing it's mouth

[marineblue]

Hi,
For a third time a fungia coral seems to lose it's mouth. I've lost 2 corals because of this, and seems it's happening again. The mouth stays open for about a week already, and I noticed today that a part of the skeleton is shown as well. My question is what is the reason for my fungias to lost their mouths? Bacteria, overfeeding or digging by shrimps and crabs? I've noticed several time my blood red and cleaning shrimps to dig into coral's mouth 1-2 hours after target feeding. I feed them with LPS grow+color, should I stop target feeding and to feed with smaller particles like plankton or rotifers only?

Thanks in advance!

 

[organism]

Most likely your shrimp, but if you stop feeding it then they'll stop killing them to get the food out. No need to feed those anyways they do fine on light alone, in general the only corals you ever need to feed are nonphotosynthetic ones like sun polyps, everything else can eat but people frequently confuse "can" with "must."

 

[marineblue]

Thank you! Probably if I get another in the future I won't target feed it....

 

[Scorpius]

Most likely your shrimp, but if you stop feeding it then they'll stop killing them to get the food out. No need to feed those anyways they do fine on light alone, in general the only corals you ever need to feed are nonphotosynthetic ones like sun polyps, everything else can eat but people frequently confuse "can" with "must."

I totally disagree with you. Any coral that has a mouth has the potential to benefit from target feeding. I target feed all my corals and most respond well to food being offered.

Fungia plate corals do like to eat.

 

[organism]

I totally disagree with you. Any coral that has a mouth has the potential to benefit from target feeding.

Once again:

in general the only corals you ever need to feed are nonphotosynthetic ones like sun polyps, everything else can eat but people frequently confuse "can" with "must."