Purple Rim Fungia

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I received a free frag from the shop I purchase my corals and it was a slice of purple-rim fungia. I have no idea how to take care off it since it does not seem to have a mouth or anything. It's just a little slice of greenish tissue with ridges and a purple edge. I see no tentacles or anything and at night it swells up but that's about it. I have it at the bottom of my sps tank and I am not sure I can keep this thing, any ideas>?
 
Can you post a pic? Without the ability to feed you'll just have to hope it has enough energy stores, and enough ability to regenerate a mouth from the light.
 
Usually they revese feeding schedules in captivity and retract at night and blow up during the day, sounds like yours is still on reef time. If tentacles come out at night try feeding it some mysis or maybe set some pellets on it during the day. Dr. Mac sells fragged fungia like this.
 
im kinda shocked they sell that. one would think they would wait until it at least develops a mouth. that looks freshly cut... not the best animal to be shipping and acclimating to a new environment....
 
This is a completely acceptable practice. It will look more and more like a regular plate over time.
 
It still looks pretty healthy and the colors are bright still. Seems like some flesh starting to grow on the cut sides, I have moved it up closer to light and seems to be happy. No tentacles however
 
I went to their site and saw that too. I've had a frag of a fungia before and it did fine and later on it grew a mouth. They are photosynthetic so thats a good thing!
 
Another option if you are wanting a "round" fungia...someone correct me if I'm wrong....is to turn it upside down for a month and then turn it back over. It will supposedly have multiple little baby fungia's on it. I learned about this at a local club meeting's fragging demo but have no personal experience with this.
 
It was explained to me that it will realize death is imminent and will use up its energy to make multiple little fungia to hopefully carry on.

I truly have no expereince doing this myself so I would double check with someone more knowledgable then myself when it comes to this. However, I've seen, in person, fungia that this was done to and it had 3 little tiny fungia on it.
 
Not sure if that is true or not, but I recently acquired a fungia from a fellow reefer. The story behind it was that the parent fungia died about 1.5 years ago, but she never took the skeleton out of the tank.

When she finally decided to remove the skeleton, lo and behold, 18 little babies were on it! So I do agree that in preparation for immenent death, these corals do prepare babies - although I have no idea about the time aspect of it.

Oh, and my baby fungia, which I got 2.5 months ago, and was only 1" wide, is now 4" wide!
 
I've read that you can take a healthy plate and score a line in the tissue /skeleton from the center to the edge, and after several months it will begin to produce babies from the injured area.
 
wow! These animals' survival instinct is amazing! We often take these creatures that we care for for granted and fail to realize that beyond their obvious appeal, they are great creatures
 
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