Plate Coral

[kathya0321]

I bought a frag of a plate coral about 4 months ago, it never did well but have tried to baby it along. Now it seems to be coming back, but are these individual babies or will the skeleton cover over again. I glued the skeleton to a rock because my crabs kept flipping it over.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I bought a frag of a plate coral about 4 months ago, it never did well but have tried to baby it along. Now it seems to be coming back, but are these individual babies or will the skeleton cover over again. I glue the skeleton to a rock because my crabs kept flipping it over.

Those are definitely new polyps. Cant say they are that of plate, but keep an eye on it and see how it develops

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Plate corals often do that, grow new polyps on old skeleton. When the baby plates grow large enough, they will pop off the old skeleton as fully formed new baby plate corals.

Sometimes the larger babies will shade the smaller babies, before they pop off, and can deprive them of light and growth. When I see that, I will sometimes help the larger faster growing baby to detach to allow it's smaller siblings the space and light they need to develop. You will know when that situation happens. You will start to see 1 larger plate coral, where they were n before, with the siblings being hidden under the larger plate.

The photo looks like potentially 4 new baby plate corals.