Odds of this hammer coral recovering?

My friend saw ad in news paper for free coral due to a tear down of a reef tank, and she grabbed this orange hammer for me as a surprise gift... Apparently it was extended when she had gotten it from the tank, no other info on it. Its clearly dying or was dying? Ive never owned a frog spawn thats been in this state before so was curious as to if anyone has owned or had a hammer die off this much and recover? My parameters are all great, so fingers crossed on this guy.:-/

The skeleton is in the shape of a T, that's all one branch.

 

That is a hammer coral, similar to a frogspawn. I think it can definately recover. It still has some tissue that is obviously alive so there is definately a chance. I think you should cut the empty skeleton off with bone cutters, but im not sure on that one.

 

Thanks on the correct lol, I hope it does, think it would grow back into its old skel though?

 

Euphyllia are pretty hardy but are prone to tissue injury from their own skeleton when being handled. The biggest issue is the damaged tissue often leads to a brown gooey bacterial infection in the area of the damage...in many cases the bacterial infection can spread and kill the coral fairly quickly. A dip in an iodine solution will sometimes kill off the bacterial infection...sometimes just good water params and gentle flow across the coral will "clean" the infected area and the rest will survive. It's hard to tell in the photos if there is damage or ongoing infection. From what I can see I would not say this piece has a death sentence at this point.

 

Is the skeleton completely coral free or is the hammer just tucked away very tightly in it? Do you see any flesh on the skeleton part?

 

Cutting away the dead portion and even cutting away a damaged/infected area can be a good idea...but unless you have a wet saw or something that will not inflict more damage it touchy...just cutting the skeleton where there is no tissue is OK, but be very careful...the skeleton on these can be brittle and fracture off more than you planned.

Tissue probably won't regrow over the old skeleton, but in time it will likely lay down new skeleton over the old...this is the process where stoney corals continue to grow on top of other dead coral skeletons that continually builds natural reefs.

 

No its just skeleton, my frogspawns have retracted like crazy before, but this has nothing at all just empty skel

 

There isnt any sign of infection or brown substance at all, the "empty" parts of the skeleton look like they have been dead for a while actually, but where its dead it looks like some of the inner skeleton might of been damaged, so hopefully its just dead up to a certain point where it was maybe damaged

 

That sounds good...I would guess given time you have a very good chance of full recovery and growth. Unless you feel the dead areas are particularly unsightly I would leave them. Most stony corals will grow/lay down new skeleton over a "hard" area much more quickly. The process of building entirely new skeleton is much slower.

 

Yeah im just gonna play the patient game with this one, hopefully it all turns out for the best! Thankyou!