Wall Hammer Question

[cichlidsrcool]

Well just wondering if anyone has experience with wall hammer. I have a 8" wall that got some of that dreaded brown jelly. To be honest I believe that when the furniture repair guy came the stuff he spayed on the couch to fix it contaiminated my tank.Had few other odd things happen that now seem under control. Anyway the hammer started in the center and died on way out to top and botton. I took it out twice a day and blew off the brown stuff. Its setting on my frag rack away from everything else. Seems now that the remaining polys about 25 % on each end are doing very well. And no more brown jelly. Should I leave it as a whole in hopes that it will one day fill back in or is it not ever fill back in? A freind of mine says that I should cut the middle dead skeleton away leaving 2 individual peices. What do you think ?

[geaux xman]

I had a pretty bad case of BJD a few months ago. Killed several LPS. I was able to save 1 head on the 7 head torch by breaking it apart. Same with my alveo.

How long has it been? I'm surprised it didnt take out the whole wall hammer.

[kurt_n]

I haven't had luck with those type of corals once the tissue around the edge is compromised and the septa are visible. I had a wall hammer that was damaged from some salt crust falling onto it. The tissue just slowly "zippered" off the skeleton. In my experience, I've never seen LPS tissue fill back in over areas where it has receeded.

Hopefully yours pulls through. I don't see though that cutting away the dead skeleton in the middle will do any good though. Then again, it can't hurt either - as long as you don't stress or damage the good part in the process.

[Patroklos]

If you think about it there really is no way for a wall type to fill back in. The animal is bulding scheeton up and out as it grows so its not going to be able to grow back into the skeleton left behind. The best you can hope for is that as the to sides expand up and out from their current skeletal level they eventiall meet in the middle, but this will be well above the level of the current dead skeleton and will take a long time.

If it was an encrusting type coral then yes, it would eventually encrust of its own dead skeleton, but wall hammers are obviously not that type of coral!