Hammer emergency ... Maybe?

R

ReefTantrum

New Member
I have a beautiful painted/bicolor hammer with about 8 fully developed heads and 2 immature heads. Yesterday I started noticing some clear/brown discharge/slime. I went to work last night with this stuff on the baby heads only... Got home this morning and it was all over 6 heads. I wish that I had the presence of mind to take a photo, but I went into complete panic mode. I immediately took it out and rinsed in fresh water to remove the slime. Then I netted and scooped out what I could see floating around the rest of the tank. Should I be panicked? I'm pretty sure I should be. And what about my other corals? This is in my 33g frag tank. Yikes! So there is a little of everything in there: blastos, trumpets, birdsnests, mushrooms, frogspawn, etc.
 
Mayja

Mayja

Social Media Moderator
RS STAFF
The slime sounds like brown jelly disease, but since it has been rinsed off I can't say for sure. Google brown jelly and see if it matched what you were describing.
 
DianaKay

DianaKay

Princess Diana
RS STAFF
Hope someone can help with suggestions. I think I'd be very worried...never saw one go from looking healthy to skeletal that fast. :( Looks serious :(
My hammer is the only coral in my tank that doesn't seem to be growing very much. It had 2 heads when I bought it & now it has 3 but seems to be the same size overall. Other corals bought at the same time have nearly doubled in size.
 
R

ReefTantrum

New Member
Mayja: In my panic I Googled, of course, and came across brown jelly. But I really don't see anything that looked like my hammer. It's as if the heads were literally liquefying. You could see the shape of the elongated hammer tips, but they were way swollen and nearly translucent with brown tint.

Diana: The literal overnight transformation is what has me in a panic. I don't want something to b so wrong that I lose everything overnight!!
 
Kongor

Kongor

Member
if it smelled real bad that's not a good sign usually. On advice of DaveK I would smell my corals I'd be worried about and if anything ranked real bad it usually died the next day. This happened to my hammer colony a couple weeks ago but my culprit was a big ALK swing.
 
R

ReefTantrum

New Member
Thanks for all the input. I read the brown jelly article, and it sounds like my culprit. But the photos I'm seeing don't look like it. I guess treating it won't hurt.

Here's how it looks now. You can see the brownish buildup on the left. It's really more translucent that it appears here.

 
Mayja

Mayja

Social Media Moderator
RS STAFF
I'm wondering if you should frag off the part that is still looking good and quarantine the other portions that have "died" but still have some tissue. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
 
kyle4201

kyle4201

Active Member
^^^+1 . I think that's exactly what I would do. However I might put the good grag separate 4 a while also. U never know.
 
ChrissyGil

ChrissyGil

Member
I would frag the good heads now, and then I would dip (both the good and damaged heads in separate containers) in an iodine dip, gently blow the brown stuff off with a turkey baster, and rinse in a separate container of tank water. Watch your other corals for signs, too. It looks like brown jelly disease and it can spread to other LPS. I would also do a large water change and run carbon if your other corals show a decline.
 
R

ReefTantrum

New Member
Ok so just a little update. I took the hammer out of the frag tank, bagged it and floated it in a 45g we have setup in our bedroom. That tank is a new tank that just finished its first cycle, so it has nothing in it but some hermits and a chromis for now. When my husband got home from work, he split all the heads and placed them in one more fresh water dip. Here's how they look now:



Hopefully, we have salvaged some of it. It'll stay in that tank until it recovers. Since its the only coral in there, it should be ok for now. As for the frag tank, I siphoned and used a tooth brush to remove what slime I could find in the tank. We also added an additional powerhead to the frag tank to try to prevent anything else from settling on the other corals.

Thanks again for the input and help today. We'll see how it goes.
 
DianaKay

DianaKay

Princess Diana
RS STAFF
Good Luck saving what you can, thanks for the update....was wondering.
Your issue with this makes me think I really need to read up more on this....just happened so fast.
 
ohiojeff

ohiojeff

Member
all the stress of this fresh water and stuff has to be harmful, I believe. the thing is if something stresses a hammer they can go south quickly. I got a new order and one of the corals, a Fiji leather came in and was in bad shape. hoping to save it, I dripped it and put it in anyway. by the next day I lost a head off my hammer. something went wrong in your tank. not sure if you had something die, release a toxin of if something went wrong in your water, but something went wrong. the slime you saw was the flesh of the hammer deteriorating. that is what they do when they die. I would stop moving and messing with it. give it some good quality water and see if it will come out of it. I don't think it will come back honestly, but I know the constant dipping and moving is only stressing it more and more, in my opinion. I hope it comes out of it, sorry this happened.
 
J

jerry26

Member
its brown jelly. fraggin it was the right thing to do. did you recently dose anything to your tank? i can trigger brown jelly on my torch coral overnight just by creating a large alkalinity swing.

if any die, clean them and turn them upside down in the sand. sometimes new heads will sprout from the skeleton.
 
Akshay

Akshay

Member
Had a similar problem with mine. One of the heads was stung by an anemone & then it retracted and developed a brown slime film. A couple of days later the brown film spread to the adjacent head...in mine the heads are connected. The moment I saw the second one going south (could still see the small polyps below the slime), I just got a pipe and sucked them out clean from the skeleton. The two remaining on the other end were therefore saved. Now they are healthy and back to normal. The stinging anemone has been moved to the back. Here is a picture of them now. You can see the middle portion which I cleaned up is completely clear...
20130726_132506_zps27f6c4e0.jpg
 
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