Dexters Reef
New member
Do you have any peppermint shrimp (or other type of shrimp)? I had a plate for a long time that started having a similar situation. Then I caught my peppermint shrimp pulling off pieces and eating it.
Normally these shrimp only eat decaying matter, IE the dead portions of my plate, but in this case, that action was preventing it from healing. I moved it to another tank and it recovered. One thing that also helped, is that in the grooves of the skeleton, you can not have any sand grains or debris, as this will prevent the healing. I had to use a pick to scrape the sand grains out, becuase they were wedged in good like in your pics. Those grooves need to be pretty much perfectly clean for it to heal. (If it never got damaged, this is normally something you dont have to worry about)
I dont think plates are hard to keep at all, and arent very tempramental. Yours might be too gone to save, but they are very resiliant and there have been numerous stories of "Dead" plate corals coming back to life several months later. Keep it in the tank, and who knows...maybe you'll find a baby in the future.
Best thing for general plate care is on the sandbed with low to medium flow (low enough where sand does not get blown on it) with mysis / small shrimp pieces fed every few days. In general, if it has a mouth, it wants to eat. If your sandbed location keeps getting sand blown on the coral, get a 2-3" piece of PVC and put it in your sandbed, and place the coral on top. This way its low in the tank, but raised a bit off the sandbed preventing sand from getting on it, and with nothing immediately below it, it wont get scraped up on rock. PVC should be 2-3" tall, and the diamater should be wide enough to hold the coral safely, but narrow enough where if the coral expanded it wouldnt touch it.
Dont give up! Try again down the line and I wish you success!
Normally these shrimp only eat decaying matter, IE the dead portions of my plate, but in this case, that action was preventing it from healing. I moved it to another tank and it recovered. One thing that also helped, is that in the grooves of the skeleton, you can not have any sand grains or debris, as this will prevent the healing. I had to use a pick to scrape the sand grains out, becuase they were wedged in good like in your pics. Those grooves need to be pretty much perfectly clean for it to heal. (If it never got damaged, this is normally something you dont have to worry about)
I dont think plates are hard to keep at all, and arent very tempramental. Yours might be too gone to save, but they are very resiliant and there have been numerous stories of "Dead" plate corals coming back to life several months later. Keep it in the tank, and who knows...maybe you'll find a baby in the future.
Best thing for general plate care is on the sandbed with low to medium flow (low enough where sand does not get blown on it) with mysis / small shrimp pieces fed every few days. In general, if it has a mouth, it wants to eat. If your sandbed location keeps getting sand blown on the coral, get a 2-3" piece of PVC and put it in your sandbed, and place the coral on top. This way its low in the tank, but raised a bit off the sandbed preventing sand from getting on it, and with nothing immediately below it, it wont get scraped up on rock. PVC should be 2-3" tall, and the diamater should be wide enough to hold the coral safely, but narrow enough where if the coral expanded it wouldnt touch it.
Dont give up! Try again down the line and I wish you success!
