Help 5 yr old messed with tank

[Paisley Rain]

Help please! My 5 year old nephew got my algae scraper and proceeded to apparently try and “move” my hammer coral. I found it fallen over on its side and when I lifted it it was droopy and the base is very pink/red. What do I do? How bad does it look? Am I panicking unnecessarily or? TIA

 

[vetteguy53081]

Help please! My 5 year old nephew got my algae scraper and proceeded to apparently try and “move” my hammer coral. I found it fallen over on its side and when I lifted it it was droopy and the base is very pink/red. What do I do? How bad does it look? Am I panicking unnecessarily or? TIA

Allow it to remain where it is. While there is risk of tissue damage, coral will shrink at lights out. Revisit tomorrow morning and see how it looks. Based on pics, should do well

 

[Paisley Rain]

Allow it to remain where it is. While there is risk of tissue damage, coral will shrink at lights out. Revisit tomorrow morning and see how it looks. Based on pics, should do well

Okay, I’ll keep an eye on it. Thank you so much!

 

[Gone Reefin’]

I would not be too concerned. When my daughter was younger, she always admired my tank. One day, I went to the bathroom and came back to a cloudy tank and my daughter sitting on couch with wet hands… she wanted to play in the sand and moved/disturbed several frags in the process. I was upset, but everything was perfectly fine when the dust settled. Life is pretty resilient..

 

[Paisley Rain]

I would not be too concerned. When my daughter was younger, she always admired my tank. One day, I went to the bathroom and came back to a cloudy tank and my daughter sitting on couch with wet hands… she wanted to play in the sand and moved/disturbed several frags in the process. I was upset, but everything was perfectly fine when the dust settled. Life is pretty resilient..

Thank you so much for that. This definitely helps set me at ease

 

[Reef Jedi]

They are very hardy! Let it sit there and I bet tomorrow it’ll look like it never happened! When one of my hammers was on a frag plug my collector urchin picked it up and carried it around for about a week before I finally said enough and plucked it lol it survived and is huge now.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Help please! My 5 year old nephew got my algae scraper and proceeded to apparently try and “move” my hammer coral. I found it fallen over on its side and when I lifted it it was droopy and the base is very pink/red. What do I do? How bad does it look? Am I panicking unnecessarily or? TIA

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

How does it look this morning? I think it will be fine.

50 years or so ago, my little sister dropped a penny into my tank. She couldn't retrieve it, so she covered it with gravel. I didn't know it was there, and I lost many fish until I found it when I tore the tank down.....

 

[larrysaltisfun]

Jay, wasn’t that one of the original treatments for Marine ICH , as pennies were made out of copper back in the day. I wouldn’t have thought it would’ve wiped out the fish maybe just the invertebrates.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Jay, wasn’t that one of the original treatments for Marine ICH , as pennies were made out of copper back in the day. I wouldn’t have thought it would’ve wiped out the fish maybe just the invertebrates.

No - that’s something that was talked about, but there was no way to dose it, so nobody who understood that would ever try it. In the 1970’s, a company marketed an “ich filter”. When somebody cut one open, they found it contained a copper pot scrubber. It was taken off the market right after that.

In the case of my coin, it was buried under the gravel and was mostly corroded away by the time I found it. I can’t remember if zinc Pennies had come out by then, of is the coin was mostly copper. Zinc is more toxic.