Is it normal that my hammer dropped a polyp?

[mell0w]

I bought this hammer coral a month ago, it had 3 heads. It's now in the process of splitting on two of those heads so it almost has about 5 total now. Today I looked over at the tank and saw this neon green thing floating around and upon looking up close, it was a single "hammer" polyp. Not a head, not a tentacle, just the end tip that's shaped like a hammer.

I have a 40g AIO with very stable parameters to my knowledge because I don't have that many corals and what I do have are very small. It's on an ATO so the salinity stays pinned at 1.026 and never changes.

Only thing I can thing of that would "stress it out" were my Nitrates? They were about 20PPM 2 weeks ago because I realized I had a piece of polyfilter in a bottom media basket I hadn't changed in like 2 months. Removed it and my Nitrates have slowly dropped back to the 0-5 PPM range over the last 2 weeks. I don't know if that's enough of a swing to cause stress or not.

Calcium is 440
Alk 7

TDS always zero, verified before I ever add salt.

Temp 76

Phosphate 0.05

Everything else in the tank is flourishing, including a BTA and an indo purple torch.

Any ideas? Is this a prewarning to a full on polyp bailout of a head? Or is this just normal behavior and how the try to reproduce/spread? Or is it stressed because it's going through a couple of splits?

Coral looks fat and happy all day long. No signs of being stressed save for the polyp it lost

 

[Flippers4pups]

A piece of a polyp is no concern, but the question is why is one floating around? Fish or invert picking on it?

 

[mell0w]

A piece of a polyp is no concern, but the question is why is one floating around? Fish or invert picking on it?

Forgive me if I don't understand the question: it lost it and the flow picked it up and it started floating around. I have 2 clownfish but I have never seen them go near the hammer, nor have I seen them actually mess with a coral.

 

[kichimark]

I believe the question was in regards if there could be anything in the tank that might have pinched it off? Such as some shrimp for example? I wouldn't worry too much if it was the hammer section of the tentacle. I see some on some instances and it has never been an issue. It sounds like your reef is doing well and corals don't tend to grow if they are not happy.