Wall Hammer Coral Tissule Recession

[Enki]

I have a wall Hammer with some tissue missing sand I was hoping for some advice on what to do about the issue.
The wall hammer coral is in a "y" shape. I noticed it had some tissue recession on the 3 ends of the coral and I asked the store owner about the recession and he said its not a problem. I had my reservations, but I bought it anyway. Now that it is in my tank some of the flesh has come off on the 3 areas and is showing bare skeleton, only 1 area has some loose flesh hanging on it and I do not see any brown jelly. I did do a drip acclimation with Bayer dip before adding the coral to my display. the coral is moving in some flow and it seems to recede or puff up as the flow changes in my tank. I have had it in my display for 60 hours. I am not sure if there is to much flow where it is located. I was thinking about moving it and doing an iodine dip but the only iodine I have is Julian Sprung's Reef Formula Iodine Concentrate. Will this work in place of the Lugols Iodine?
What should I do, if anything, to help the coral?

My temp is 77.5, sg is 1.024, ph is 7.95-8.15, alk is 8.5, calcium is 440, mag is 1300.

[Dkuhlmann]

Pictures speak a thousand words

[Enki]

Here are some pictures

9-24-15

9-25-15

[Dkuhlmann]

They appear to have too much flow. Try placing them down in the sand and in an area of low flow and see if they don't do much better

[Dkuhlmann]

Here is a picture of my wall hammer so you can get an idea of placement and appearance of a healthy happy hammer

[Docdiggy]

With that much skeleton showing, I'd say it's over. I've been down that road before. Sorry to be negative, I've seen that happen to a couple torch heads and it always went south.

[Dkuhlmann]

No I wouldn't say it's over as mine shows complete skeleton at night when it goes to sleep. That one is showing that much skeleton because of too much water flow and not fully extending it's polyps which is a sign of too much water flow. It needs to be in a gentle flow area with low/med light. If the OP moves it to a spot that fits this description it will fully extend it's polyps.

[Dkuhlmann]

Here is mine not open all the way, then open all the way and a tank shot where it sits

20150919_194408[1].jpg

20150909_143829[1].jpg

[rt67ghy]

If it starts to show more skeleton I'd dip it in Lugol's iodine every day until the recession stops because if there is tissue recession it could die very quickly. I have saved 2 hammers from tissue recession with iodine dips after they lost most of their flesh to disease.

[Enki]

It looks like it is losing a little each day. Last night I moved it to a lower flow area and lower in the tank but there is one area in the tank I could move it to where the flow is even lower.
Should I try spot feeding the coral? One person on the boards said they used pellet, I used spectrum, food soaked so it was soft to spot feed. I tried that last night. I was thinking I have goniopower or other small food as well.
Right now I have Julian Sprung's reef formula Iodine concentrate, will that work for a dip?
If not, I get some Lugol's iodine tomorrow and start dipping.

[Dkuhlmann]

Yah go ahead and do the dip to see if it stops it any, certainly won't hurt it.

[Docdiggy]

Like I previously stated, it's a downhill battle. I believe my problem was related to summer temp changes.

[Dkuhlmann]

Yes they are sensitive to erratic water changes, they do best if all parameters are stable

[Enki]

I dipped the wall coral in Luglo's 1/2 gallon of tank water and 15 drops of Lugol's for 15 minutes. (30 drops per gallon is the recommended dosage.) I used a disposable pipette to remove any dead flesh. Finally, I used Coraffix, super glue, on the area of cleaned skeleton.
Here are some picks. It looks good now we'll see.

[Dkuhlmann]

Looks much better!

[Docdiggy]

Wow!! Not bad.

[Louis Z]

I would coral rx it and put in QT. Don't let it spread to others. I now qt all corals the same as fish . All live things have to earn the right to be in DT .only exception is dry rock and dry sand. Good thing is that it is still open . To me the bell tolls when it receeds so much after showing tissue recession.

[Ocean envy]

Looks much better. My hammer likes gentle flow, just enough to move it a little and it is midtank. It would be a good idea to feed it. Some nice meaty food like mysis and tiny pieces of fish and clams. Pellets are good too, but some of my lps will kickout certian brands and and take others. So watch closely when using them. The one pellet they all like is fauna marin - lps grow and color.

[Enki]

Guess What.
It is taking a turn for the worse.
The coral had been looking much better for several days. and the the brown jelly started showing up.
Things that may be suspect to affecting the coral:
I did a water change 10%
my alk gets depleted in my tank and I added alk , randy 2 part, but not calcium, my calcium seems to be stable and I need to add alk 3 times as often as I do calcium.
I had a water temp drop.
my alk dropped to 6.76 and I brought my alk up to 7.86 and then to 8.4.
I run apex and I am installing dosser so I will be adding alk daily to maintain.
on the apex my temp is at 77-77.9 on one night it droped to 76 degrees. ( i don't think the temp caused the problem, but it did happen.
the past 2 nights I have been dipping in Lugol's iodine every day and removing the brown slime with a feeding pipette. The coral looks great the rest of the night, except for the additional skeleton and less flesh.
The next day more brown Jelly.
So, any ideas what to do. I stopped using supper glue, but may try again. at this rate if it keeps progressing for the worse like it is it seems it will be gone in 4 days to a week.

Weird thing about this problem all my other corals look great. The corals are growing and have great polyp extension and I even brought back a damaged scoly. I have another branching euphelia next to this wall hammer and it looks great as well.

Any ideas on what to do would be great even if just to add to common knowledge here for rc.

[Dkuhlmann]

I'm going thru brown jelly with my Duncan colony and to treat it you need iodine. Read this
http://www.athiel.com/lib/bacterial.html

[Daniel62]

I say Wall hammers are 1 of the hardest to keep alive. None of the people I know can keep them alive for more than a couple months. Good luck to you

[Enki]

I dipped the wall hammer again.
There is about 25% of the flesh left on the coral.
Crazy thing is, it looks health the living part.
I feel that if it was individual heads, of coral, and I was doing this process I would probably save the majority of the coral heads. With a Wall Hammer it seems like an infection is hard to stop spreading.
I decided to glue the skeleton to see what will happen.
Thanks

[firefighternick]

I just got the same problem with my wall hammer. At first I put gobs of superglue on the dead rotting parts, but I believe that it goes deeper into the skeleton than what I could get to. What solved it for me was I fragged off the dead parts with a dremel, straight into good tissue, and then sealed it off on the side with superglue, that way when it healed it was healing from good tissue and not the bad. Hope that makes sense.

[frankyrivera]

Wall hammers are notoriously hard to keep if not impossible long term. The branching variety have better success rate. I've tried dips change of light change of flow but it seems once it starts showing skeleton its downhill from there.

[rt67ghy]

You need to keep dipping it in Lugol's for some days for dipping to work. I have a wall and a branching hammer both of which had BJD when I got them. I dipped the wall for about 25 days and the branching for maybe 20 days. Now they're both fine and feeding and growing well.