Coral of the Month, March 07 Orange Plate Coral

Mount it on a tripod and click every 15 sec, that is the time laps on the video. Just get a web cam and have the computer do it.

 

Web cam? Nuh unh...Roger can't be trusted with one of those!

 

Inwall are you sure they are sweepers?? Ive seen sweepers before and these just look like strings... They only come out at night, and they are comming from the edge of the plate. It is wierd!! If you turn the lights on they will retract back into the plate. They are about 8 inches long too!! I have a brain coral mybe 8-10 inches away, so im not super worried but it is a thought. I was thinking mybe some kinda bacteria eating parisite has been hosting the plate, but im not sure. It never hurt anything in the nano when it was there, but it did send out the stings...

 

No, I'm not sure because I haven't seen them. When someone describes white strings coming from a fungiidae at night, that's just an assumption I make.

It could obviously be other things.....heck, there might even be vermetid snails growing on it's skeleton and they definately send out white strings.

 

You know, ive never even thought about vermetid snails!! That could be it. I ran a search on them, and found they do get buried in corals sometimes and send out white stings to get food. I mite have to flip the plate over later and see if I can see one. Thanks for the great idea!!! Now that I think of it, the plate did have some kinda barnical growing out of it when I first got it. And I had to dig it out, mybe the same thing happend on the back side...

 

We just picked up an Orange Plate a few weeks ago. It is an awesome specimen. He opens his mouth whenever we feed the tank, and we feed him mysis and brine shrimp..Definitely one of our favorites...

 

Where the heck is Birchell