Killed my hammer coral

[IslandCrow]

Well, I had a nice little hammer coral frag I brought home from the LFS, and it was looking great for the first couple weeks, especially after I upgraded from my 96W PC setup to my 156W T-5s. As a matter of fact, it looked even better than it did at the LFS. Then, over the course of about three days, it went from bright and vibrant to somewhat limp, to mostly retracted, to quickly disintegrating. Now, I wasn't feeding it, but from everything I've read, it mainly just needs light and doesn't need to be fed. The only other thing I can think of is that my nitrates have been a little high recently (10 ppm), but there were no changes in any of the parameters while the coral was in my tank. It was acclimated over a few hours with me slowly adding water from my tank into its bag while equalizing the temperature. I didn't use the drip method, so I suppose it could have been an acclimation problem, but I would think it would have declined right away in that case instead of prospering for two weeks or more. Anyway, here are the rest of my parameters. It was sitting midway down in my tank with light to moderate water flow and about 16" below my lights:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphate: >5 ppm (5 is where the scale on my test starts)
PH: 8.1 - 8.2
Alk: 3.0 - 3.5
Temp: 77 - 79
Spec Grav: 1.025
Photo period: 12 hours w/ 2 lights and 3-4 hours with all 4 (still getting things acclimated to the new setup)
Calcium: Unknown. . .I just do regular 10% water changes and add Kent Coral Vite once a week.

Any guesses? I really hate killing things.

 

[reefwick]

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not sure why it would die so rapidly like that. FWIW always feed your LPS. I know many people don't and I'm sure there will be a million post after this that says "I've never fed my LPS/Hammer and it has grown 10 fold". IME they are much happier and healthy when they are fed a few chunks of meaty foods every so often. After all they are animals, not plants, they need to eat ya know???

Good luck in the future man.

 

[ri]

It does not sound like you did anything wrong. Even with elevated Nitrates, I would not think the coral would go that quickly.

Any idea how long the store had it before you bought it?

ri

 

[DJ88©]

[moved]

 

[IslandCrow]

I'm not sure how long the LFS had it. They're prettty reputable, but it was a frag, so it very well could have had underlying issues they were not aware of. That is one nice thing about frags, though. Like I said, I really hate to kill anything, but at least it's not much money lost. Anyway, I'm thinking it's not what killed this guy, but I'll start feeding my LPS corals now. . .or coral. I just have a pagoda now.

 

[worlds under]

hammers are touchy to changes in current and temp. did you have it in a high current area??

 

[IslandCrow]

I'm never sure how high current high current is. I'd say there was a comparable amount of "swaying" between where I put it in my tank and in the fish store. I would actually consider it moderate flow, so that possibly could have been a problem. One other thing I didn't think about at the time but after doing some more reading I believe may have been a factor. I had it glued midway down a rock, and some of the tentacles brushed against the rock structure behind it. Could this have irritated the coral and led to its demise? Here's a picture to illustrate what I'm talking about. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a very good position.