Hammer Help!

[DHolbrook]

Hello all, my hammer is only a single head which I got about 5 months ago. It took nicely to the tank/location and I swore the colors were getting richer and the head splitting into 2. We'll I'm a teacher and three weeks ago I moved my tank 20 long, home for summer. Nothing about the tank has changed it just moved. My water chemistry is easily within spec., ph 8.0 , all other levels including phosphate, match my lfs which has been really great to me and they are specialists on corals. Sps Coral in la Canada, ca. Anyway my hammer has never looked the same. I don't know what to do I tried moving it everywhere high light, lowlight, high flow, low flow, but it likes nothing. Lfs says to give it more time, maybe sand got stuck in it. I know my algae is crazy right now, but I siphon and replace water every day, but just maybe a gallon. What do I do??

 

[MesmatePipe]

Maybe something weird to do with the moon, stuff like that can happen with coral

 

[mbingha]

Looks like you have a bad case of cyano. What is your nitrates and phosphates? I would do lights out for 3 days to help get rid of that. Your coral looks really pi$$ed, can you tell us more about what kind of setup you have? That much cyano leads me to believe it's a fairly low flow tank.

 

[DHolbrook]

Ok I'll keep lights off for three days. My nitrates are 0 and phosphates are .1. I don't have a protein skimmer or sump, just a hob filter I clean monthly and two jets. One is a koralis nano 240 and the other is a 550. I do 25 percent water change weekly. Lights are cheap Chinese t5 bulbs (4) two blue and two white. Like I said though, my set up hasn't changed a bit, I just moved it. I used 50 percent same water after the move too. Algae is wild right now because I never had a cuc until about a week ago.

 

[mbingha]

How much surface agitation are you getting? Cyano uses up a lot of oxygen and without good surface agitation your o2 may be lower than ideal. As long as the bulbs aren't too old it doesn't sound like a lighting issue. Does the hammer inflate at night?

 

[DHolbrook]

I was checking last night...
The hammer only swells a bit and only on one side. At most it's arms, which used to be maybe 1.5 inches long are like little tic-tacs. Agitation seems good with the hob filter pouring water in all the time, bit I'll try for more with the fans.

 

[mbingha]

Do you have a coral dip such as coral Rx? If so, I would do it and be sure to blue off any cyano from the coral itself.

 

[mbingha]

Also, what's your salinity and temp at?

 

[DHolbrook]

Thanks for the help so far! Temp is 77 and salinity is 1.025. Very stable with both. I don't have a dip but I'll get some tomorrow due to holiday today. I have some algae fix from API, but didn't want to use it while coral is so weak. I'll siphon it though and get the dip ASAP.