coral emergency

ok one of my frogspawn heads is now begining to completely fall off and slime my tank. i removed the entire piece but my question is as follows. how do i go about cutting the dying head off without damaging the other? the branch is so close that the 2 heads are somewhat connected. in the pic you can see the dying head hanging on the bottom. what should i do? id really like to salvage what i can out of this.

 

the torn piece fell off while moving the coral. it is now in a tank with very low water flow and even less lighting. a little help would be greatly appreciated on whether i should butcher the head of this thing, junk it alltogether, or what.

 

IME

Leave it Vinnie - sure it looks untidy but I have an 8 head Torch (similar species)
it was a 9 head torch - I handled it badly during a tank change out and one head is no longer with us

they dont like being touched when expanded
they dont like contact with any solid surfaces when expanded
they dont handle parameter changes to well ( dont pour any additives or fresh salt water directly over them)

Your coral can survive without any porblem with a single head lost

you could frag it using a dremmel cutter to remove the dead head
but I wont do this with mine as I have seen new heads grow as side branches/ shoots from where dead heads are

Steve

 

thanks steve, the only thing i was really worried about was that if the head is decaying in the tank, how badly would this affect the other corals present (hammer, xenia, and a few others).

 

good point
how big is the tank? are you running carbon?
do you have a skimmer?

run carbon I did and have a good skimmer , nothing else was affected by the single heads
decay in my 70.

Steve

 

i have a 180, lost a couple heads when i did a fresh water dip to remove some flat worms that i recieved from another reefer. had about 4 heads die in the tank and i left them there and nothing was affected but i also have a total system volume of 300+ gallons and a awsome skimmer and 2 bags of carbon.

 

the tank is small, biocube 14. i dont have a skimmer in there yet but i can run carbon if that helps. i dont know if you can tell by the pic but the piece that was hanging off completely broke off and now you can see a portion of the skeleton on the one side. the other head looks to be in decent shape except for the fact that its completely deflated. i have it place towards the top of the tank where the flow is the weakest. any other things i should be doing about it yet?

edit- im actually running chemipure elite at the moment, could that be considered like a carbon substitute? i can run regular carbon if needed.

 

You will be fine bud, just run some carbon and you will be good to go!

 

vinnie
run carbon - good idea
not to much flow - good idea

monitor and report , and dont handle to much in the mean time

Steve

 

thanks again steve, i really appreciate it. i'll be back begging for more help later if i need it.