hammer question
 

I'm a newbie, so forgive me if this sounds stupid, but there are some of the strands coming out of my hammerhead coral that are growing a LOT longer than the others.


Is this normal, or a sign of anything?

Thanks,
Dunl

Do you mean some tentacles on the hammer are a lot longer than others (sorry if that was the question) If so.. this is completely normal. It's IMO a good sign.. the bigger.. longer, fuller, etc.. an LPS looks, then to me that's a sign of a happy and healthy LPS coral (LPS being... frogspawn, torch, hammer, etc, etc...)

It's most likely growing! And just by chance do you have one of those pink/green hammers? I've noticed that these types seem to like to do that more than other variants of hammer corals. Maybe it's just me though..

Tentacles.....sheesh, talk about a brain fart for not remembering that.

Pink with green tips, straight from Golds. Right under a 250 MH, too, so it is probably just growing. :)

Thanks,
Dunl

Sometimes they discharge long threads...to me it looks like 'poop'. Normal.

Hammer corals will put out sweeper tentacles when they sense another coral is growing too close to them. These sweepers look like elongated tentacles, that can be sometimes 4" to 5" longer then its normal tentacle length. These sweepers can also pack quite a sting so if you have other corals in the vicinity you might want to move them :biggrin:

Marie's got it right,
My hammer does the same thing if it thinks anything is to close to it.
Don't under estimate how much damage it can do either.
I had a candy cane frag that got in its line of fire and overnite it destroyed a entire head with just one sweeper tentacle

My bad.. the only reason I said that was becuase I had a piece of this hammer and it was all by itself with no corals around it, and I always seen it like this. I just assumed it was growth :lol: oops. :redface:

Two shrooms next to it, nothing else.....


Second question.....can you frag these by splitting the head in two, and letting it regenerate?

As long as your not fragging near any flesh at all, and are cutting the skeleton (the hard bone-like part :lol: ) then you're okay. Just stay away from any fleshy bits or parts of the coral, period. If any flesh is damaged the coral is at risk

HTH, (im not a fragging wizard like some on here..)

In my experience, Euphylia can develop longer stringy tenticles when too much flow is directed toward them.