Frogspawn losing head

[morganatlanta]

I have a frogspawn that has been doing well, going from 2 heads to 16 or so in two years. Recently, one of the heads has started to peel away from the stalk. See the pic. The head is still attached to the stalk by a thin piece of flesh, but has otherwise peeled away. None of the other heads seem affected (yet). Any ideas why this might happen? There's nothing in the tank that would nip at it as far as I know.
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[sucio_reefer]

Not sure if it's true but I recall reading somewhere tht one of the rarer forms of them growing/spreading is pretty much a head dropping off. I think it's something they do more in the wild to spread over wider areas.

 

[morganatlanta]

That would be cool if true, better than "it's about to totally disintegrate on you".

 

[sts04c]

It maybe brown jelly disease. If so dip and cut off as much of the damaged areas as possible.

 

[patrick]

They do not live forever. I have branching hammer and I started with 7 heads between two different colonies in 2006. I have since had over 400 heads just from it. The large colonies....each head is actually a separate animal..... I have now all have a few heads that looked exactly like what you are showing. For seemingly no reason, a head will just up and die off. It isnt long before the rest grow over it and new heads are always popping up off of them. It just happens. the concern should come if several start dying.....that is an indication of a problem. As long as the other heads are OK.....I wouldn't get too worried.

 

[jennm]

Since the rest of the colony doesn't appear to be opening, I would suspect there's something going on with it. I'd do a medicated, disinfecting dip and watch for issues with the remaining polyps. Since that one is so close to the remainder of the colony - it looks like there is other soft tissue from other polyps very close, I don't know if I'd try to frag it unless that was a last resort. If you could get a clean cut of the dead portion away from the rest of the colony, without damaging the soft tissue from the adjacent polyps, then I'd do that, but if there's a risk of doing further damage, I'd dip and then hope for the best.

Jenn

 

[morganatlanta]

Hmmm... I broke the colony up into three separate clumps about a year ago, so just to be safe, I'll snip off the hanging piece the empty skeleton and dip the rest on that clump and see what happens from there. Maybe I'll move the affected clump to another part of the tank so there is less chance of spreading an infection if there is one.

 

[miami dolfan]

Morgan, I have the same issue. Mine just lost a head, but has 3 more growing beneath it.