Something Destroyed my Hammer

[Just1MoreTank]

Ok, (hammer hybrid). I woke up yesterday morning to this. Essentially half of the coral is just gone. I can't tell if it was stung and melted, or if something munched on it. It's been moved to a quarantine tank. Anybody have any idea? Up until this point, the coral was flourishing and my oldest tenured coral.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

If 1 of the others near it was a torch then coral warfare.
Normally other Euphylia get along.

 

[Just1MoreTank]

Both of the torches I have are on the other side of the tank, only corals around this are other hammers and a couple Zoa's near the bottom. That's why I can't figure out if it's melted or not.

 

[Timfish]

If it's completely gone it sounds like a "brown jelly" infection which is generally a secondary infection. It's "possible" the zoas might have been the initial cause. It's also possible it had a problem when you got it, bacterial infections can remain hidden for a long time, and there was a subtle shift in conditions in your system that it just wasn't able to deal with.

 

[Sk8r]

Another possibility is a 'popped head'. THey do this when not happy with lighting, the smell wafting their way in the circulation from a 'hotter' rival, like a leather or torch, or when water quality is an issue, or when food is too scarce. Or when picked on by a fish. Or when shaded from the light by another head. THis is a survival mechanism. The popped head floats until it lodges and if it sticks in a favorable place, it can start to rebuild skeleton where it sits. Euphyllias (hammer, frog, torch) can all do this. I recovered a frog head and placed it in a shallow but inescapable glass bowl on the floor of the tank and it grew a respectable skeleton, becoming a new coral.