LPS surviving months without a mouth !?!?

[FFalas]

Hi all, sometime ago, for reasons still unknown to me, some of my SPS withered and lost their mouths, leaving only a thin amount of flesh behind against the skeleton..they retained some of the color but ended up mostly pale.. This happened to all my acans (two types) and to my scollies (again two differnt types in opposite corners of the tank). Other SPS - cat, torch, frogspawn and trumpets and later a gonio were all untouched and have kept on flourishing.

I threw away a scolly and left the other three as there was no sign of the flesh rotting and they were stuck in now quite inacessible points of the tank.
Upon careful inspection i could not notice any mouths, only a thin layer of flesh against the skeleton and a thin membrane stretching fully across the center. This had stayed like that for about four/five months. Now all of a sudden, over the last week the mouths ar growing back and the acans are getting their plumpness back again. Nothing has been done to the tank which has run 100pct routine since well before the incident. The acans are both inflated and a mouthlike hole is forming across the centre (this hole has formed out of the blue from the thin membrane that covered the whole cente). The scolly as also fluffed up and has a bulge where the mouth should/would be...

Have not heard/read of this happening.. Is this something normal or something anyone has experience with?

 

[MechEng99]

It's pretty common with Blastomussas. I haven't experienced it with a scoly.

 

[Donkeykong]

LPS dont need a mouth to survive, many reefers never feed there LPS just let it get what it needs from the light.

 

[MechEng99]

Corals are animals... They need a mouth/digestive system to survive as that is where they expel waste. They can survive temporarily without one, but I'm not aware of any coral that can live indefinitely without one.

 

[Donkeykong]

Corals are animals... They need a mouth/digestive system to survive as that is where they expel waste. They can survive temporarily without one, but I'm not aware of any coral that can live indefinitely without one.

Yes, that is why I put that they can survive without a mouth, but they will not thrive until they can recover. If the conditions don't improve eventually they will die

 

[wildman926]

LPS dont need a mouth to survive, many reefers never feed there LPS just let it get what it needs from the light.

True. They either make their food from the pigment in their flesh, or if they are lucky, something falls in their mouth.

How often in the wild does something fall in their mouth?

They also feed off what is in the water. That is done by inflating/deflating.

I never have fed my hammers, frogspawn, torch, etc. They started as 2 heads, and now are over 20 in 2 years.

 

[IdahoGuy]

I've never once fed a torch, frogspawn, any of the euphyllias. They do just fine. I feed Scoly's about once a month, they seem to do fine as well.

 

[FFalas]

Cheers, for answers, I do feed the corals tiny particulate foods which will end up with the LPS at some point, however I am puzzled as to what could have caused them to expel their mouths and regrow them so abruptly?