Long tentacle plate blows up!

[Rlumenator]

My long tentacle green plate (heliofungia) lived happily, well extended for almost (2) months when suddenly, about a month ago, it puffed up like a puffer fish. I mean The base was really huge. like a ball! I thought it was spawning or something.Shortly after that it stopped extending as much. The tentacles became about half the normal length. I thought it would "come back". Then about (6) days ago, I saw a small white area of bleaching,and then the tentacles were really stubby. The bleaching overtook it swiftly, and now it is just a white skeleton. What happened?? Has anyone else had this lovely experience? Thank you, Dawn.

 

[mac_guy]

The same thing happened to me recently and mine has sice perished. I would like to find out what happened to yours so that i can prevent it from happening in the future.

 

[dizzy]

Live and learn. We always try to sell the short tentacle plate corals. I tell customers that the long tentacle plate look good at first, but are difficult to keep. My personal experience is similar to yours.

 

[Mikef1]

You will find that almost all of them do this. I have a short tenacle right now that does awsome but like dizzy said the long tenacles just dont do good.

 

[Rlumenator]

But what caused it to blow up after doing so well?

 

[Reefman150]

Mine puffs up once in a while. I think they do it to move themselves. Mine is usually a few inches over after this puffing. I've had mine going on 1 1/2 years.

 

[taikonaut]

I disagree that puffing is related to bleaching. They puffed once a while, and if not attached, will move around. (Most heliofungia are sold detached, but a few people have it attach to substrate when young.)

I can't offer any explaination as to what caused it death, but it can die without puffing, and sometime it puffs up without any harmful result. One thing is that it will slightly expand near the mouth if you feed it, but it doubt that is the case for you.

 

[Reefman150]

Dawn, did you feed it? Mine loves mysis shrimp. It's cool to watch him move the food along his tenticals to his mouth.

 

[Rlumenator]

No, I did not target feed it. I didn't read anywhere that it needed target feeding.

 

[taikonaut]

Target feeding is not absolutely necessary. I target fed my green plate about 3 or 4 time in past 4 years?

 

[Fastmarc]

I have one from June last year and target feed it often. It seems to be doing good so far. I honestly thinks it appriciates it.

 

[Rlumenator]

What and how do you feed the long tentacle plates? The only thing I have in my aquarium that I target feed is my red serpent, who easily grabs krill off a fondue fork.

 

[taikonaut]

Drop any small bit of fish food (krill, pieces of shrimp, etc.) on the plate (no pun here), and it will serve itself by moving them slowing toward the mouth... certainly something interesting to watch!

 

[david252]

Heliofungia "blowing up" is a normal occurance to enable them to move around the substrate (which is meant to be the best place for them, they can do well on live rock but you need to have other live rock or similar surrounding them or they will move & fall).

They are supposedly hardy (relatively speaking) for stony corals but the same thing happened to mine & on researching this topic it seems a lot of peolpe have had similar experiences with it retracting from it's skeleton base & ultimately dying.

From what I've read, target feeding isn't necessary for survival but is appreciated.

Mine seemed to retract in 1 particular segment which was in slightly higher water flow than the rest & from this point the skeleton became visible & it ultimately died. Not sure if high water flow was to blame but who knows? They are meant to like low to medium flow .

I read somewhere that targeting them with kent iodine solution in a dropper over the area where they are retracted improved things but I suspect once their underlying skeleton is exposed it's crtains . Sorry.

Hope this is of some help.

David