Hammer coral problem: Knotted, stringy-looking growths from between flesh and base.

ColtonWillett · Feb 7, 2022

I've Googled and Googled and I couldn't find anything like this, but maybe somebody here know what's up. I've recently disturbed everything in my tank while getting rid of a bad cyano infestation, caused by neglect and a month of no water changes. I did 3 or 4 ~20% water changes over the course of a about 4 days, scrubbing everything in the tank with a toothbrush, then doing a chemiclean treatment followed by another 20% water change. During the deep clean I carefully (I thought) scrubbed the skeleton of my hammer coral, to remove cyanobacteria that had crept up all over the base. A couple weeks after that I noticed what you see in the pics on a couple spots around the coral, that seem to be growing very slowly. I also noticed a few tentacles looked like they had been nearly pinched off at the base. It hasnt been staying retracted but it doesn't come out quite as far as it did in its prime and I know I just messed with the chemistry and probably stressed it out enough without taking the toothbrush to it. Maybe I damaged the fleshy bits of the coral with he toothbrush? Was that a completely asanine thing to have done? Thank you for taking the time to read this.