Inflated bubble on branching hammer coral

bacaksiz · #1 06/01/2006, 04:14 AM

I have noticed an inflated piece of tissue forming a bubble on one of the branches of my perfectly healthy hammer coral. The bubble was initially on one of the branches, but now I see the beginning signs on another branch as well. I have checked several books for this condition but couldn't find a similar situation.

The picture below explicitly shows the bubble. The quality is low because I took the photo at night, when the tentacles were somewhat retracted, to ensure that the bubble is not lost in between them.

No other animal is showing any kind of stress whatsoever in the tank (550 g).

What do you think, should I worry?

ALTI · #2 06/01/2006, 05:27 AM

no worries abe,
its either going to develope into a new head or drop off a bud. i think eric borneman has some pics of this on his site in the coral polyp extrusion area.

bacaksiz · #3 06/01/2006, 07:38 AM

Yeah I got it. Apparently its not a bad thing at all. (:

Interested parties can find the link to the specific page at Eric Borneman's site in the following URL:

http://www.ericborneman.com/Coral%20...0vesicles.html

Thanks ALTI...

davejnz · #4 06/02/2006, 06:09 AM

Its not polyp extrusion though,it is a just one of those weird behaviors that Euphyllia spp. do.I've seen it with my Hammers and Frogspawns.IME,the bubbling has always been a prelude to the polyps splittin,sometimes splitting into 3.

this is polyps extrusion

mussel20 · #5 06/02/2006, 09:56 AM

don't worry, everyone is right. It is just the polyp splitting heads. This is a good thing, grow baby grow!

bacaksiz · #6 06/06/2006, 01:10 AM

yeah everybody was right, the bubble divided into four heads and now i started to see the same story on my frogspawn as well.. :-)