Plate coral vs. Plate coral vs. Plate Coral growth rate

duberii

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Now, I know a lot of taxonomy in the hobby is exclusively for scientific reasons (like the whole micromussa/ acan lord thing, scolys, etc). However, I do think there could be some value in identifying some similar-looking corals like fungias, cycloserises, herpolitha, heliofungia, diaseris, lithophyllon, etc corals for reasons that are useful for the hobby. One area I'm particularly interested in (and I think many others will be as well) is growth rate.

Here's some conclusions I've drawn about the similar looking corals:
1) Lithophyllon repanda, which looks particularly like a fungia with a single mouth, apparently grows particularly slowly, which is shared among lithophyllon corals.
2) Diaseris corals, at least in my experience, grow fairly quickly when fed. The best part of these corals is that they naturally form thin parts in their skeleton that you can either break yourselves, or given enough time, will break off by itself. It has earned the same " the self fragging coral" for this reason. For some context, mine grew from 2 to 5 mouths in the first couple of months, which is uncommon for corals during their 'settling in' period.

Looking back, that's a pretty pathetic list, but I'd love to hear anybody else's stories about the growth of their fungia/ herpolitha/cycloseris etc corals compared to each other.
 

Ron Reefman

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Interesting idea for discussion.
 
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duberii

duberii

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Interesting idea for discussion.
Thanks! What really sparked it was the whole cycloseris vs fungia thing. A plate coral was sold to me as a fungia but I later found out it was a cycloseris (which is a pretty common misclassification apparently). My whole thing was why should it matter to just the average hobbyist? Other than the mound around the mouth for cycloseris corals, I really didn't care all that much. That is, unless there's a difference in growth rate, which I anticipate there may be.
 
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