Hammer coral dying?

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DurTBear

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 6, 2007
Messages
102
Location
San Francisco, CA
I don't know what happened but one of the heads on my hammer coral doesn't look good. I've basically tried to extract all the slime on the middle head which must've been the remnants of the head. Is this brown jelly? I hope it doesn't spread:

img_775118_0_814908e411735ba9492b3f540296d7ee.jpg
 
Looks like it to me.

How much flow do you have on the coral? Too strong can cause it. Does anything host the coral? Have you bumped it/drop it lately?

I would detach that head as soon as possible to keep it from spreading. It has the possibility too, yes. I am losing heads on my torch coral from the clowns irritating it all the time.

HTH
 
I just had that happen to my branching torch coral and as Lindsay said you have to break that head off and throw it away. You need to do it soon so nothing else gets infected. If anyother heads start to look like it you`ll need to break it off also. Here is a pic of my torch. I waited too long and lost another head.
 

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Do you simply use your hands and break it from the base of the branch? I originally tried to clear as much of the slime as possible but left a few bulbs because I simply couldn't clean the whole thing up. Now, the few bulbs that I left have reinflated again and look healthy. However, it looks like I just lost another one so I'll probably break that one off tonight.

As for the flow, the flow is very gentle so I don't suspect that that's a problem. The clowns also don't try to host it as they seem much more interested in the frogspawn. But I supposed I could have accidentally bumped into it while working in the tank or something like that. Regardless, I will try to break off the branch.
 
I just took a pair of pliars to mine (thoug (though, it was torch). Squeezed it and twisted. It's not like a real hard bone or rock. It was kinda like a mushy, yet hard substance that water saturates and makes easy to break.
 
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