Expertise needed on hammer coral, pronto!!

[christyf5]

Ok, I got home this evening and checked my tank as usual and was horrified to see a two long strings of brownish stringy goo emanating from the "mouths" of two of the heads of my branching hammer coral. Ack! [img]images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] What to do?!? What the hell is going on here? Anyone have any idea? I called a friend with a digital camera but by the time he got here the deal was done and the strings were gone, leaving me with one happy head and two shrivelled up sad looking ones. Since then the two sad heads have perked up a bit and started to return to normal but are severely reduced in size compared to the happy head. All my water parameters are normal (NH3, NO2, NO3 = 0, sg=1.026, pH=8.3, 48G tank, 2x250W MH, 2x40W NO actinics). Anyone have any idea of what happened??? What to expect now?? Scary stuff.
Christy [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]

[Acro]

Christy I'm know expert but sounds like its releasing zooxanthalae. I don't beleive it's a big deal they exspell them once in awhile to either repopulate or to exspell extras.Does the coral appear in a healthy state?I know my clams do this on occasion.The tangs love it. Jamie

[Aquattro]

Christy, my hammer and frogspawn do that all the time. No worries. They are both growing very well so I know they're OK. Jamie is correct about the zooxanthalae.

[Shadetree]

Just to give you another thought of relief, I too have witnessed this before with no ill effects.

Scott

[Silverfish]

My frogspawn does it too once in a while [img]images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[One_Divided]

Mine does it every once ina while.

It didn't used to do it, but I have been feeding it a small amount the last couple months and it has.. I would be scepticle about the feeding, but the coral has only startd really growing since I started feeding.. could be coincidence.

Anyway, another vote for normal!

[DJ88]

Ditto here Christy.

[christyf5]

Phew! Thanks for the reassurance guys. What a scary thing to see. That has never happened before. The lights were still off when I left this morning so I haven't seen how it did overnight. Maybe I'll go home at lunch and check on it. I guess there isn't much to do if it decides to kick off anyway but it certainly looked better about 30 mins after its little ordeal. I noticed all sorts of little heads starting to grow (about 5 or so) around the base of the other heads so it must be doing okay, and it looked healthy before all this so I think it will make it. I'll keep my fingers crossed anyway [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thanks again
Christy [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[ 17 January 2002: Message edited by: christyf5 ]

[christyf5]

Too funny. This is the response I got from Eric Borneman over on Reefcentral:

"another victim of dreaded coral poop"


Haha. Man all that worrying over turds.I need to get a life [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]
All I can say is what the heck has that coral been eating? I haven't fed it in ages!

Christy [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[canadawest]

It is a frag of one of my corals Christy, and everyone knows I grow the hardiest corals in the land. (LPS and softies exclusively of course!) [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] So of course it's fine, it's just going to the bathroom! [img]images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img]

Looks like everyone else beat me to the answer. As you know I have lots of LPS corals, and most of them exibit the "coral poop" behavior every so often, usually once every month or so. (When I actually catch it, so who knows it could be more frequently).

PS.. I only directly feed my LPS corals once every month or so, otherwise it's "regular nature at work" in my tank.