Help! Is this hammer pooping?

Jonathan lee · Sep 18, 2020

Is my hammer pooping or what? Its been fine this morning then i came home to this. Looks like white slime coming out of the centre. Hard to see in the pic but theres a 1 inch string of slime. It also shrivelled up so much. Its normally open up to about 3 inches? I used a turkey baster and sucked it up since it was touching my other hammers. And yes its the only hammer doing this. The rest are normal. Im not sure if something irritated it or what? My alk is low at 6.5dkh cause im currently testing daily to see how much i need to dose to keep it stable at 7.7-7.8dkh. Not sure if the alk drop stressed it. Anyway the white part on the skeleton is all flesh coming down from the coralites. The flesh comes down an inch from the top.

nitrate 7
Phosphate 0.03
Alkalinity 6.5dkh(normally 7.7dkh)
Calcium 430
Temp 26c
Ammonia and nitrite 0

dwest · Sep 18, 2020

It looks to me like the bigger hammer is attacking the smaller one. That would be unusual in my experience. I would move the smaller one.

Jonathan lee · Sep 18, 2020

dwest said:
It looks to me like the bigger hammer is attacking the smaller one. That would be unusual in my experience. I would move the smaller one.

When fully opened they both touch each other. I dont know if theres some stinging between the two or not. If they were stinging the smaller one then the smaller one would have shrunk right and not open up and touching the bigger?

dwest · Sep 18, 2020

I am not understanding your question to be honest. But the smaller one looks like it could be getting attacked by a neighboring coral or possibly has a brown jelly infection.

Jonathan lee · Sep 18, 2020

dwest said:
I am not understanding your question to be honest. But the smaller one looks like it could be getting attacked by a neighboring coral or possibly has a brown jelly infection.

I meant if the smaller hammer was being irritated by the bigger hammer, wouldnt the smaller hammer not open so big and stay small so it wont touch the other hammer? Cause since i got it, it has always open up big. Its about 3 inches wide when fully open in low flow. I just dipped in iodine hoping to kill any bacteria if any. Also found a crack in the side of the hammer which looked like it had dying flesh inside. The crack wasnt there when i got it. So i covered the hole with super glue