Help with damaged trumpet coral

[cmeek]

I recentley bought a green trumpet coral frag. When I was attaching it to a rock one of the polyps broke off. I never touched it so I'm assuming the weight of the polyp out of the water caused it. Here is the kicker... It had grown attached to another polyp before it fell off, so it is just hanging off of the other polyp. It has been a couple of days and the broken polyp seems to be doing fine it extends its sweeper tentacles to eat at night and expands during the day. Will it grow the stem back or reattach to the old stem? Or should I remove it, and if so how do I do that?

[sharkbait]

I would leave it alone. Basically you have just reversed the growth - instead of growing a new head and splitting off you've grown them back together, which is fortunate since it broke. They touch and grow back together all the time; I wouldn't worry about that. And if the head is extending sweepers and trying to feed I'm not all that worried about some sort of infection.
As you obviously know, with fleshy LPS make sure to irritate them a bit (I hold them in front of a gentle powerhead) before pulling out of the water. Trumpet are not as bad in this respect, but, say, a brain coral that expands to many times its deflated size is filled with more than enough water weight to tear the flesh apart if pulled out of the water.

good luck!
--Michael

[cmeek]

Thanks for the info Sharkbait. I thought the polyps had closed enough but was obviously wrong. I can now breath a sigh of relief.