What are these spots on my hammer?

[Dodgersfan]

So I noticed today that my two teal hammers (fragged off of the same colony, acquired about a month ago) have these little reddish spots on them, they seem to be kind of symmetrical/in hexagon patterns in some places, they look like they’re inside the flesh, not on top of that makes any sense, but no way to know for sure. I just target fed reef roids yesterday and they are a similar color to that. The heads looked swollen/puffed out today. I’ve been fighting hair algae in the tank and just finished 1 week with blues only. Ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0.05, nitrate is 2, phosphate is 0.8, alk is 11.5, cal is 450, mag is 1260. Ph is 8.2.


They look a lot like eggs. Everything in the tank was dipped with coralRx when added. I can pull them and redip them, but I do not have a QT/frag tank to seperate them.

The rest of the hammers and torches look fine

iPhone pics, sorry.

 

[Holy_makerel]

Looks like gametes to me. Thats cool!!

 

[Ride the wave]

Looks like something that shouldn’t be there. I suggest you take a closer look at the whole coral including the bare skeleton underneath.

John

 

[Ride the wave]

Hope it’s not these ones in photo above which I am combating at the moment, although mine have laid eggs on the skeleton and not the tentacles

 

[Dodgersfan]

Looks like something that shouldn’t be there. I suggest you take a closer look at the whole coral including the bare skeleton underneath.

John

I flashed the lights on real quick this morning when the heads were retracted and got a good look at the skeleton, nothing to really see there.

Are those nudibranchs or flat worms in your pics? What color are their eggs? Did you dip or quarantine all coral and rocks in your tank? Did you start with live rock or dead?

 

[Ride the wave]

They are Polyclad flatworms purple and about 2cm long. Seethrough and white when young. The eggs are tiny and yellow and are placed in patches looking like honeycomb. You wouldnt the see the eggs without some magnification. They came in on 2 corals I bought which both the shop and I had dipped and not noticed. I have removed 40 large ones and been brushing the eggs off when dipping. I have added a six line 2 melanaris and a yellow wrasse to eat them. I don’t think that this is what you have. Perhaps some other type of flatworm?
I started many years ago and have always used liverock

 

[Dodgersfan]

Well there are definitely some similarities between what you've got and what I've got, although it sounds like mine are quite a bit bigger. We did similar QT procedures (Dip, but no quarantine) so there's a chance this could be some other type of flatworm eggs. one thing that is strange though is that I've got 5 other hammers on that same rock, all of which are between the two teal ones that came from the same mother colony, only the two teals show it though, what are the odds that a pest would've skipped over the other hammers and just went after the two teal ones?

Maybe i need to ask the #reefsquad for their opinion..

 

[DSC reef]

@Dodgersfan, your first pic looks like gammets typical from spawning. I don't think it's flatworms.

 

[Ride the wave]

Well there are definitely some similarities between what you've got and what I've got, although it sounds like mine are quite a bit bigger. We did similar QT procedures (Dip, but no quarantine) so there's a chance this could be some other type of flatworm eggs. one thing that is strange though is that I've got 5 other hammers on that same rock, all of which are between the two teal ones that came from the same mother colony, only the two teals show it though, what are the odds that a pest would've skipped over the other hammers and just went after the two teal ones?

Maybe i need to ask the #reefsquad for their opinion..

I suspect the mother colony had eggs and you had 2 frags off it both with eggs. The dip didn’t kill the eggs

 

[Dodgersfan]

I suspect the mother colony had eggs and you had 2 frags off it both with eggs. The dip didn’t kill the eggs

But if that’s the case why are they only visible now, more than a month after buying the frags? They literally showed up overnight between Monday and Tuesday. I keep a pretty close eye on my tank, I’m confident I would’ve seen them if they were there before now. Is that something that is common with flatworm eggs? (I have no experience with flatworms) would they suddenly get dramatically larger/change from clear to colored?

 

[Ride the wave]

But if that’s the case why are they only visible now, more than a month after buying the frags? They literally showed up overnight between Monday and Tuesday. I keep a pretty close eye on my tank, I’m confident I would’ve seen them if they were there before now. Is that something that is common with flatworm eggs? (I have no experience with flatworms) would they suddenly get dramatically larger/change from clear to colored?

To be honest I’ve not come across hammers on hammers before and my Polyclad flatworms are the first I’ve had. The spots on your corals look like egg spots... are they the hammers or has something laid them?

Keep an eye on them. If they are expanding normally then just observe. If they’re looking unhappy then it could be something undesirable.

 

[Dodgersfan]

@Dodgersfan, your first pic looks like gammets typical from spawning. I don't think it's flatworms.

thanks DSC, if it's spawning is it something that anyone's had any success with in captivity? or do the eggs generally just get eaten up/skimmed out?

 

[DSC reef]

I'm not to sure on the success, I believe I saw a video of a store who had a very large colony release gammets. I haven't read any damage to the coral during the process. I would imagine it would be free fish food.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Update: (cause I was just thinking the other day that I hate when I look up a thread with a similar problem to what I’m having and they don’t post how it turned out)

The little spots disappeared after a few days, I wasn’t home much during that time so I didn’t get to see them released. Both hammers are perfectly fine and back to normal now. Looks like this was most likely gammates, wish I could’ve seen them release, that woulda been cool...

 

[reef lover]

Maybe they'l be some babies popping up in your future!