Plate coral babies - next step?

[droth335]

We lost a plate coral in September after a "kalk incident" and now the skeleton has numerous babies on it (50-60+?). On one side of the skeleton there are so many babies they are growing on top of one another (see pic below). My questions are:
1) should we remove some of the ones on top so they don't "smother" the other ones or let nature take its course?
2) how to raise them if we do (or don't for that matter) remove them due to their small size - the largest ones are maybe 2x the size of a pencil eraser at best.

Thoughts?

Thanks

 

[triggreef]

Too bad all the other corals don't end up like this, eh? Imagine the dent that would put in the price of coral... Anyhow, I would say you should be able to clip them off easy enough with bone cutters. Then mount on plugs and let them grow?

 

[AkoAung]

We lost a plate coral in September after a "kalk incident" and now the skeleton has numerous babies on it (50-60+?). On one side of the skeleton there are so many babies they are growing on top of one another (see pic below). My questions are:
1) should we remove some of the ones on top so they don't "smother" the other ones or let nature take its course?
2) how to raise them if we do (or don't for that matter) remove them due to their small size - the largest ones are maybe 2x the size of a pencil eraser at best.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Holy cow!
can you please share with us your husbandry practices, lighting, salt, additives, etc?

 

[Phildirt]

I would get a shallow small open top acrylic box and put some substrate at the bottom. Place this in the bottom of your tank where this coral currently is and then the babies in this.

Not sure how to detach the babies from the main structure. Perhaps you can get a very fine pair of tweezers, or thin pointed hemostats and break a small portion of main structure that they are attached to. Also, they may not need to be detached. Hopefully someone with experience in this will chime in.

 

[droth335]

Thanks for all the input.

Some additional background. After the plate died in late September I moved the skeleton to the back of the tank behind a rock pile so it was out of sight but would still get light as I knew this was a somewhat common outcome so we were hoping it would turn out this way. We first noticed the "buds" about 30 days later but weren't sure if they were babies or something else. Probably about 30 days ago we were 99% sure they were babies and other corals in the tank have been growing a lot so we decided to retrieve the skeleton out of the tank 2 days ago and move it to the frag section of the sump for the same tank before we ended up having to bust up other corals to get it out. This required the use of tongs due to the location (back of a 30" deep tank). The picture above is from its new location in the sump. As a result of the move about 3-4 of the babies (mostly very, very small ones fell off in the sump so I have 3 of them now glued to frag plugs as an experiment to see if they will continue to thrive (concerned they would get lost if left untethered as small as they are). I left one group of 2 teeny ones alone in the sump as they seem to have settled in a clear spot along the wall to see which ones do better. The rest I have decided to leave as is after further assessment of options:

1. Bone cutter suggestion - not an option due to their size. I would smoosh others around them in an attempt to free some up (the macro lens shot probably makes them look larger than they really are).
2. Tried to gently pry one of the larger ones loose with a tweezers but it seemed pretty stoutly attached yet and its flesh was pretty expanded so I could see I was squeezing it some with tweezers and didn't want to risk damaging it.

Decided at this point it is probably best to let nature take its course and now can easily monitor them. I would love to hear from someone who has had this experience to see what worked and what didn't.

Regarding the husbandry question above this is in our 280 (72"x72"x72") tank which is about a 330 gallon system. We have LED lighting, use IO salt and dose Alk (baking soda), CA (BRS) and sponge power. It is a mixed reef with lots of SPS/LPS and a few softies (zoa & clove polyps) along with a couple of BTA's and 4 clams.

Again, thanks for the input!

 

[somosomo]

I had this happen with a Fungia several years ago. I had bought the coral from the rescue bin at a LFS. There was only a small strip of tissue left. After about three weeks all the tissue receded and disappeared. I left the skeleton in the tank and after about a month I was surprised to see tiny buds on it. They developed into mini plate corals.

I elected to take nature take its course. As each bud became too large for its calcium stalk/ got bulldozed by snails/ bumped by fish or invertebrates they would fall to the bottom of the tank. I did nothing to them except turn them over if they landed face down. Initially I had about 30 of them which were great to trade ..they hit quarter/half dollar size pretty quick. This went on for almost four years before it stopped. I think the constant breaking off kept the original skeleton stimulated. At the beginning there were a lot but over time it would only bud off one or two at a time.

Heres a pic of the skeleton toward the end of the budding
<a href="http://s972.photobucket.com/user/etan714/media/My%2075%20gallon%20mixed%20reef/DSC_2542.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae208/etan714/My%2075%20gallon%20mixed%20reef/DSC_2542.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo DSC_2542.jpg"/></a>

and one showing some of the babies
<a href="http://s972.photobucket.com/user/etan714/media/My%2075%20gallon%20mixed%20reef/DSC_2518.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae208/etan714/My%2075%20gallon%20mixed%20reef/DSC_2518.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo DSC_2518.jpg"/></a>

 

[droth335]

Thanks for the input Somosomo. Did you ever target feed them? Now that I have them in the frag section they are easy to monitor. I fed them reef roids this afternoon and definitely had a noticeable feeding response from a lot of them.

I assume the orange one above was not one of the babies and you are referring to the smaller ones on the right, correct? Nice tank BTW.
Thanks

 

[joshky]

I love seeing plate corals do this, it's so cool! Thanks for sharing and good luck with the babies.

 

[oceanarium]

You will find they start to be misshaped and fuse together when there are so many on the one skeleton.

They would be to small just now but as they get larger and are squeezed for room you can test some of the bigger ones to see if they are ready to dislodge. if they are just a gentle lever with a plastic butter knife will pop them off. need to be careful because its easy also to crack them in half.

I had an orange one much the same and used to pop them off to make room for the smaller ones to grow and to allow the next one to start growing.

They can look after themselves quite well once dislodged, not needing any special care.

 

[droth335]

You will find they start to be misshaped and fuse together when there are so many on the one skeleton.

They would be to small just now but as they get larger and are squeezed for room you can test some of the bigger ones to see if they are ready to dislodge. if they are just a gentle lever with a plastic butter knife will pop them off. need to be careful because its easy also to crack them in half.

I had an orange one much the same and used to pop them off to make room for the smaller ones to grow and to allow the next one to start growing.

They can look after themselves quite well once dislodged, not needing any special care.

Thanks Oceanarium. Good suggestions. I appreciate the input.

 

[somosomo]

Yes, I would target feed them sporadically. I used finely chopped up mysis when I did.. but honestly they seemed to do fine without it.

 

[Reef Frog]

Does anyone know the biology behind this? Are these juveniles growing asexually from tiny piece of left over tissue?

Or is it a sexual reproduction? For example are they coming from gametes some how? Is it possible some Fungia spp. come to us from the ocean already fertilized and the juveniles can somehow reappear on the parent's skeleton?

I have seen declining Fungia & other plate corals at a LFS. I may take a chance on getting one if the opportunity & price are right, and see what happens. This a very cool thing and great to see - thanks to the OP! It has to be one of those exceptional reef keeping experiences!

 

[droth335]

Does anyone know the biology behind this? Are these juveniles growing asexually from tiny piece of left over tissue?

Or is it a sexual reproduction? For example are they coming from gametes some how? Is it possible some Fungia spp. come to us from the ocean already fertilized and the juveniles can somehow reappear on the parent's skeleton?

Great questions. I assume asexual as a last ditch effort to propagate but I really don't know. Maybe someone else knows and can chime in.

 

[Tweaked]

The "baby" corals of which you speak are anthocauli (buds) on Fungiid corals. It is a common misconception that many Fungia never recover after they seem to have died (become denuded of tissue). Most in fact will begin to decalcify and issue these daughter satellites after just a few months. Leave those skeletons in the tank! When the clones grow big enough in the ocean, wave action/erosion and boring organisms dissolve the stem under the new bud and it breaks away to become free-living like its parent. The parent then continues to produce new buds.

 

[Reef Frog]

If a seemingly dead Fungia skeleton gets a light coating of diatoms or a dusting of algae, would that keep new juveniles from growing? Or should the skeleton remain virtually pristine & white for this phenomena to have a chance of occurring?

My LFS store happens to have 2 Fungias on their way out right now and I can probably get them cheap. They have a light coating of grunge on the skeleton; nothing too bad, the ribs are still quite visible. Anybody ever have success with a plate skeleton like this? I am assuming any attempt to clean up the skeleton would be a bad idea. If it doesn't happen, when would you throw in the towel and toss the skeleton? Can anyone comment on this?

 

[WerezMiePie]

Budding is one of 3 ways of asexual reproduction. Like a potato :>

Edit: I think there's more ways of a sexual reproduction but, there are 3 common ways of I guess plant asexual reproduction...