Hammer coral ripped from skeleton

[Clarinuto]

Something ripped one of the heads off on my branching hammer coral. The skeleton is still there and the coral head was dropped in another part of the tank. Will the ripped head live or should I remove the flesh?

 

[Oscaror]

Something ripped one of the heads off on my branching hammer coral. The skeleton is still there and the coral head was dropped in another part of the tank. Will the ripped head live or should I remove the flesh?

I have never seen this before... I'm kinda curious

 

[Tiwo]

Something ripped one of the heads off on my branching hammer coral. The skeleton is still there and the coral head was dropped in another part of the tank. Will the ripped head live or should I remove the flesh?

I had this happen a few months ago. It’s called polyp bailout and usually happens when a coral is unhappy. However in my case, my hammer was as happy as can be. I even had a colony next to it that is still doing fine to this day. So I’m not really sure what the main cause of it is.

The polyp I had bailout is still alive. I have it in a cup on the bottom of the tank with very low flow and it’s doing good but has not grown any skeleton.

If I were you I would (just to be safe) separate the hammer still inside it’s skeleton from the ‘bailout’ skeleton (if that makes sense), that way if it is a pest, it hopefully won’t continue to make the other heads of the hammer do this.

 

[Super Fly]

This happened to one of my hammer and the "dropped" coral survived. I just glued it to a rock and it's been thriving ever since. Just be careful handling as hammer is very easy to crush

 

[Lloyd Williams]

Hammers can bail, as can frogspawn and torch. I’ve seen all three. Sometimes they survive. Sometimes not.

 

[Clarinuto]

Wow, I had no idea. I will try regluing the drop off and fragging the remaining coral as well as dipping. Every thing else in the tank seems okay so I am hoping this isn’t the beginning of a downward spiral.

 

[clipperking]

It's that hammer in close proximity to other coral because they do put out toxins and it stresses out the coral. It should live but check your water hardness and calcium

 

[Clarinuto]

It's that hammer in close proximity to other coral because they do put out toxins and it stresses out the coral. It should live but check your water hardness and calcium

The remaining skeleton and polyps or the floating polyp will release toxins?

 

[Clarinuto]

Update: the issue was the dang heater. I didn’t realize it until about a day later, but the internal thermometer was reading the right temp however it wasn’t heating the tank past 73 degrees. I usually run the tank at 77-79 degrees. Now that I have the heater under control and on a monitor, everything is doing fine.

 

[mlucisano]

mine did the same thing
its a brain though
left its skeleton now floating around the tank i did lower the wavemaker as not to violently blow it around

 

[noobreefer2]

Hey, this is a pretty old post, but how did it turn out?

 

[shanikap123]

This happened to one of my hammer and the "dropped" coral survived. I just glued it to a rock and it's been thriving ever since. Just be careful handling as hammer is very easy to crush

This just happened to me. It does not have a skeleton, so I’m not sure if I should try to glue it. How is yours doing?