plate coral

[sandman12]

MY lfs has a ncie plate coral for sale, it is about the size of a baseball, a little smaller. It is long tentical and i was wondering if i could get it?
30 gallon long tank (which means its short)
192 watts of PC
I have softies and a bubble right now that r doing fine for the most part.
Anything i should now about plate corals? Is this a good coral to buy?BTW its $35 is that a good deal?

 

[sandman12]

bump, iam going today so if i get and come back on dont tell me hard they r to keep. I always seem to find out about the coral after i buy it.

 

[jugger]

not sure if you are saying its a LONG tentical plate or it just has longish tenticals.... but i have a short tentical fungia (plate) that is about 9" round with tenticals that are about 2 inches long....and he is very easy to keep.... at first i only had 72 watts on my 20 gallon and he was fine....even regenerated alot of damaged tissue from shipping....now i have him over 202 watts and has grown FAST from 3" to 9"...... he loves to eat just about anything from silvers, live brine, frozen brine and other meatys......every easy coral to keep.....
btw put him on a soft surface..ie the sand bed

 

[krishj39]

OK, I may be too late, but long tentacled plate corals are notouriously hard to keep alive. Many do have success, and they are not a coral that shouldn't be considered for the home aquarium, but they are not just another easy care coral. I don't think much is known on what extra care they need to stay healthy, besides the obvious things true for all corals. They just seem to have more of a tendency to slowly die off. There IS a difference between a short tentacled plate coral that happens to have longer tentacles, and an actual long tentacled plate.

 

[enomadra]

I am by no means an expert at this hobby as I have just started it 6 months ago. I picked up a long tentacle plate coral and have had not a problem with it. It was in fact prob. 3 inches when I first bought it and it will now open up to about 8 inches across. I guess I have gotten lucky.
That’s it on the bottom right. I never feed it anything but light and what ever it catches from plankton feeding

 

[krishj39]

Looks like a very healthy long tentacle plate, and tank for that matter. Keep up the good work. May I suggest supplimenting it by feeding it bits of meat (silversides, sand eel, squid, clam, scallop, etc) once in a while? It seems fine as it is, but I'm sure you can make it even happier by feeding it. My theory is that if you CAN feed it, you probably should. Your plate coral is clearly an example to show that they can be kept healthy, however it is still important to be sure the people who buy them know before hand that they can be very tough to keep alive. It really seems to be based just on luck of the draw (just like a good number of other animals--elegance, anenomes, etc). Some plate corals will be hardy with no problems, while the one right next to it will die off without hope of survival. Glad that you got one that is hardy.