Help with Hammer Coral

M

mjheverly

New member
Hey guys,

I need some suggestions and help with hammer coral. I have had it for about a week now and it is yet to fully open. It will open slightly but not too much more than when it is completely closed like at night time. It also has continued to release the white strands that I sometimes see on coral when introducing them to my tank. All of my parameters have been normal and consistent and all of my other coral are thriving (softies, mushrooms and polyps)

I have tried two places in the tank now. The first place the coral was at for 5 days. This was at the bottom of the tank at the spot of lowest water movement and I have since moved it to the spot in the picture below that has more lighting and a little higher water movement. It has been there for 2 days and no improvement since the first spot. If anyone has any idea of what might be happening or what I can do to help please let me know

Thanks
 

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I have mine sitting in the middle of the tank about six inches below my mp40 pump, which is a spot with the most current flow with moderate lighting.
 
I've always read that they should be placed in an area of low/moderate flow? Should I move him into a more direct flow area in the tank? If it hasn't opened some more by tomorrow (third day in current spot) I might try to move it once again into a spot with some additional flow
 
Also you might want to check for possible pests. Maybe vermitted snail attached itself to it? Honestly, I feel these creatures can sense things in the tank. In the picture, you have red mushrooms next to it. LPS don't really like softies. There might be some sort of chemical stuff going on. Do you run any carbon?
 
I was going to warn about the mushrooms, too. I had one big one move up under a head of my touch and it killed it. My torch was over a year old with three heads, now it's only got two.
 
Thanks for the help everyone. I moved the hammer and the mushrooms to opposite sides of the tank. The only three corals on the one side of the tank now are the hammer, a yellow leather which is thriving and a small polyp colony that are also thriving. It's been just over 24 hours and no noticeable change yet except the hammer has stopped releasing the white strands.

I also just wanted to give everyone a look at my water parameters in case you might see something that I dont

Temp - 82
Salinity - 1.025
PH - 8.1
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
Phosphate - 0.25
KH - 9
Calcium - 420

Again, thanks for the help everyone, I'll continue to post updates until the hammer is thriving again (fingers crossed)
 
How big is this tank mj? I only ask because of your temp reading at 82. I'm running a 120 4 foot at 76 at the furthest point from the heaters in the sump set/controlled at 79 degrees. In four feet of water I can easily lose 3 degrees. In a smaller tank fluctuations would be much tighter. If that's the case the optimal temp might be just a tad too high?

It's worth looking into.

Oh and since I'm new to hammers too... I did some reading and youtube watching as well. I found out you can supplemental feed these with regular shrimp from the grocery store washed in ro/di water with bits shredded off them and target fed. That mucus looking strands are their waste products 'coral poop'. When a big glob of that stuff floats in front of a pump it gets blown to bits and the fish go crazy for those blasted bits. I've also fed it Microviore zooplankton and mine processed/consumed that stuff much faster resulting in the same strands of waste but much quicker.

Overall I think your doing okay with it, do you recall it looking larger in the store?
 
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So a month later and I am still having major issues with the hammer coral. All parameters are still the same as above and I've also lowered the normal temperature to about 79 degrees (same at the top of the tank and the bottom).

Now the hammer has split in two and half of the hammer is thriving while the other half is still receding and dying. Does anybody have any idea what could the issue could be that the same hammer could be doing so bad next to the same hammer doing so well?
 

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I am by no means a hammer expert other than I own one. Leathers and hammers don't do well next to one another. One is a softy and the other an LPS and will have chemical warfare. You could consider cutting off the dead area and save the area that is thriving. Is there any brown stuff around the dying area? If there is brown stuff it could be brown jelly disease. (I personally don't know too much about the disease aside from it being contagious and will cause tissue recession very rapidly). The coral might have had damage to it before you bought it. Did it have any receding or dead areas when you first got it? Water quality is a must and I have found that hammers are a good detector of good water quality. Are you running any carbon? If you are mixing softies with hard corals, you should probably look into that if you are not (I run Chemi Pure elite). Circulation flow should be random, never direct. Direct circulation flow will cause tissue damage and possible death. Direct flow will also be the cause of poor polyp extension. If you have tried moving it to a location where it is pretty much by itself and it is still doing badly while all other corals are fine, it just might have had damage before you got it. My guess is leaning toward that it could have been damaged in shipping or collecting/fragging or transporting. What is next to the half of the coral that is dying? Is there another coral next to that half that could be killing it? I have a mix of soft and hard corals and I keep the soft corals on one side of the tank and the hard ones on the other side. Leathers can release toxins and try to kill a hammer and a hammer can sting and be aggressive with other corals as well including being aggressive at times even with the same species. Hammers need space.
 
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justthewife said:
leathers and hammers don't do well together. One is a softy and the other an LPS.
Click to expand...

I actually just moved it next to the yellow fiji because I was told that it does poorly next to the mushrooms. Would the mushrooms and leather be ok next to each other if i moved them and left the hammer by itself on the other side of the tank?
 
In my experience, torches, hammers, grapes, frogspawn - all these types - are pretty sensitive too disruptions. Just being knocked over in my tank, it may not fully come out for two weeks afterwards. So the medicine here is patience. As far as lighting and water flow, they're pretty adaptable as long as not right next to either - so variations in either from what's it's used to will not be devastating to it. So my advice is to either leave it be where it is, or at most move it right now to where you think is a good spot, and leave it be from there on. Don't try to feed it or bug it in any way and just be patient for a good while, at least a month. But don't move it any more after that.

Please update this thread in another month so there is a course of information through the stages of it's acclimation.

Dave
 
mjheverly said:
I actually just moved it next to the yellow fiji because I was told that it does poorly next to the mushrooms. Would the mushrooms and leather be ok next to each other if i moved them and left the hammer by itself on the other side of the tank?
Click to expand...

Please re-read my previous post above as I edited and added stuff. In my opinion, you should not have it next to the fiji.
 
I just read in Eric Bornemans book of Corals that some recession from the margins toward the center of this coral is common.
 
Pick a spot with moderat to slow flow, Lighting around 150par until it feels better and leave it be. Quit moving it around. Corals will get used to things like water changes and glass cleaning magnets zooming by. But when you move them their orientation to the light and currents changes. Its akin to rearranging a blind persons house and expecting them to move around as before.
I just lost a head off a beautiful Torch Coral yesterday out of the blue and no concrete evidence of the cause. This can certainly be a frustrating hobby. Right up there with Poker.

Jeff
 
Has anyone on here had success with wall hammers? Longer than a year? I was just told that they don't last much longer than that.

I had one that was absolutely beautiful with minor recession I thought caused by the pistol moving sand around. It was great for 9 months & then slowly went downhill. Calcium was a little low & even with dosing, testing, & bumping up water changes it never recovered. It lasted a total of 13 months start to finish. I don't know that I will try another one.
 
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