Hammer Coral Receding...Help!

[Mike 1911A1]

Does anyone know why my Hammer Coral could be receding. I have checked all the water params and they all seem fine except my alkalinty was low (just got back from a bus. trip). Anyway, I added Alkalinity buffer. My hammer has a bare spot that appears to be growing (open skeleton). What can cause this? Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Low alk and Mg can do that to hammer and blastos.

 

[Mike 1911A1]

Will it regenerate once levels are good?

 

[salt newbie01]

hey mike,
I am having the same problem with my hammer - my alk is a little high but it is slowly drifting away to nothing. I had it for approx a month with no problems. the only thing that changed for me was I added a toadstool leather on the opposite side of the tank. All of my tank parameters are good except fot the slightly high alk. It is a mystery. Have you added any new corals in the last few days? Has anything changed or been added in the last few days? How do your other corals look? If your like me you hate for something to go wrong and not know why. All my other corals look great, just the hammer is not doing well. I am giving it to another reefer in hopes that it may survive. There is a post I started in the East TN reef club forum about it. It may give you some ideas. Hope it gets better.

Good luck.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Seriously, check your Mg levels.

I ran across some tanks recently where they had high alk and low Mg... close to 1000. The hammers were all having probs.

I think it's a calcification problem with the low Mg. And supposedly hammers are some of the first to show the effects. I've seen blasto polyps bail too.

I think the hammer can recover. They tend to be pretty tough. I had to be careful not to feed mine because it grew so fast. I ended up fragging it and trading it away because I didn't want to keep dealing with it outgrowing my tank and stinging everything. It was a hecka nice branching hammer too... multiple heads that opened up huge. They all fit together to about 8" diameter.

 

[overCee]

To salt_newbie01:

In the article 'Renaming Our Corals' on Reefkeeping Magazine this month there may be an answer to your problem.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-03/cj/index.php

Apparently, many species of soft coral can release various toxins to combat other corals. The article specifically mentions that the Euphyllia group of corals (including hammers) is very suceptible to these toxins.

 

[Mike 1911A1]

I added some mushrooms about 4 days before I noticed problems with the hammer. Off to read the article. Also, I am doing for mg with aragonmilk. Has anyone had experience with Aragonmilk?

 

[JmLee]

aragonmilk reminds me of purple up.