Wall hammer suddenly not opening?

I agree that the coral has to go it is on a downward spiral it will not survive once the skeleton is exposed like that it is very rare to save it. for future ref. any damage to any part of the smooth mantle beneath the polyps is almost certain death even too much touching of the mantle can cause death for these corals.
 
Sorry I should have been more specific. I am using instant ocean reef crystals. I forgot about the purple kind actually. I just did a water change so that the levels should be back to normal again, hopefully. hmm I will have to look into the dosing some more. Do I have to set up a dripping system or can I just add it to the tank periodically?
 
Hmm... if you're using Reef Crystals, it should be in the 450-480 range if you're mixing it up to 1.025ish. What is the salinity of your freshly made saltwater?

If you're getting 360, you might've gotten a bad bucket (it happens) or your test kit is reading low. Or your salinity is really low. Before you go down the dosing road, I'd get someone else with a different test kit to confirm that calcium number.

Regarding your water change bringing up your calcium levels... if your tank is at 300ppm calcium, even if you do a 50% water change with 360ppm water you're only going to get it up to 330ppm in your tank. So just water changes is not going to get you out of the hole.

If you're really and truly at 300ppm calcium, that could easily explain why your Acros aren't happy. But who knows... those things are picky. That's why I'm an LPS person! If you're at 300 for real, you're going to have to raise the calcium levels up to something around 400ppm, at least, in your main tank. You can do this by mixing up a solution of RO/DI water and a calcium additive like Kent's Turbo Calcium. Slowly raise the calcium levels in your tank no more than 20ppm per day.

After you get it to your target level, stop, and wait a week with no water changes. Then after a week, measure your calcium level. You've now determined how much calcium your tank requires per week. If you started at 400ppm, and ended at 365ppm a week later, you know your tank needs 35ppm calcium per week, or 5ppm per day. Then use one of the online calcium/alk calculators to determine how many ml of 2-part solution you need to use. That's it in a nutshell. A good primer on cal/alk issues can be found here...

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/11/chemistry

...and a good online calculator here...

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

You don't have to set up a drip using 2-part, unless you're putting in so much that your pH levels go up too much when putting it in all at once. (The alkalinity part of the 2-part solution temporarily raises pH) But I doubt you're there yet. You can just slowly pour the solution in first thing in the morning, when your pH is low. You dribble in some of the part "A" solution, then dribble in the part "B" solution. That's it. Pretty simple.

But I'd double check that calcium reading with a different test kit first. Something doesn't sound right there.
 
Thanks for the good info Kurt! Idk the calc and alk have been nuts in this tank for me. A couple months ago the calc and alk were thru the roof and I didn't dose anything. So I let it be thinking the tank just needs to establish itself more and thats why I was having crazy calc and alk readings. So i haven't tested for calc mag and alk until the other day to see if it stabilized itself over time and it was low. I also had my lfs test my calc and alk when it was high and they got the same readings as me and they used salifert. I'm going to test for all three again tomorrow and see what I come up with. I could have done the test wrong bc ive only ever used that test kit a few times so far so maybe I don't have the hang of it yet. The little drops and shaking is pretty precise lol

As for the hammer...I pulled it out. It was just looking like a disaster and I really dont want to spread it to my other Lps corals bc I do have quite a few in there. Not sure if it goes after brains but I have three brians, a meat coral, a branching hammer, Todd's torch and some acans. So let's just say I will be keeping a close eye on all of my Lps corals. I really am considering ditching the sps corals. If they die or don't do well I am not going to replace them. The only sps I may get is a sunset monti but those are fairly hardy for sps. Let me tell you having to ditch that wall hammer almost made me cry :( it was beautilful and I didn't even have it a week.. Actually tomorrow it would have been a week. I'll have to talk to my lfs and see if he can get me another one and then maybe I'll have him hold it for a week for me. Or maybe I just won't get any more corals for now since my tank is depressing me lately >:( at least my ten gallon is in ship shape :) anways, is there something I should to as a precaution to prevent my other Lps corals from getting this disease? I did turn off all flow when I removed the hammer so the brown goop didn't go anywhere.
 
I had brown jelly on a bubble coral after it got damaged by a crab dragging itself over it. I did like you and took the coral out without noticeably getting the brown stuff anywhere else. It never reappeared anywhere else. That's my only experience with the stuff - hopefully your experience will be the same.

Sorry about the wall hammer. I had a pink one that I killed a while back. I was cleaning the rim of the tank, and some dried up salt spray/creep fell down into the tank. It dropped straight onto the hammer. I didn't notice it until a few minutes later and it was all retracted. When I finally realized what I'd done and blew off the dried up salt, there was a fair amount of tissue damage. It just never recovered after that. At least in your case, it wasn't something *you* did!

I looked at your earlier build threads to see what else you had in the tank, and if you still have that Marineland "reef capable" LED over your tank, *that* is probably why you can't keep SPS. Contrary to what Marineland says, that thing just isn't powerful enough for things like Acros. Birdsnests up high are probably OK, but those aren't very demanding.
 
Thanks for the moral support! My Todd's torch is my prized coral and it's on the opposite side of where the hammer was so I don't think it will be affected. I only had those marinelands on there for a short while until i got my permenant light which is the kessil a350w led. Now that sucker is sopposed to keep sps corals :) its funny I put my maxi mini anemone in the tank and it went into hiding for a while to adjust to the new powerful light and now it got itself parked straight under the light :)
 
I had my prized Welsphylia(spelling) die from brown jelly none of my other LPS were affected. I tried everything to save it from cutting out bad spots to iodine dips. Nothing saved it, I was actual ****ed because I had that coral for 5 years.
 
Alright I just got done testing again. Here are the results

Calcium 370
Alk 9.8
Mag 1160

So everything is a bit low right?
 
You calcium should be around 400 - 480, mag should be around 1200, and alk is safe between 8-14. So you don't really need to worry about alk right now.
 
Okay so since I need to up the calc and mag what do I need to buy? What does everyone here use? Brand names please :)
 
Normally, you want your mag to be about 3x your calcium. And you're pretty much spot on with the last set of numbers. So whatever you do to raise your calcium, you're going to want to raise your magnesium also. Make sure whatever you add contains magnesium in addition to the calcium. My choice in pure calcium additive is Kent's Turbo Calcium, but that's just calcium. I think most of the 2-part solution's calcium bottle also contains magnesium. So if you just used the calcium part of a 2-part solution, that should work. I use C-Balance, but only because that's what I started with and I didn't have any issues with it - so I stuck with it. There's cheaper stuff out there that's probably just as good, but I haven't tried it.

I'd probably wait a few more weeks though, testing occasionally, before trying to correct the calcium issue. The accuracy of our test kits isn't that great, and 370 isn't that far away from 400 - in the big picture of things. And if you're using Reef Crystals, it should really be higher than that. How old is your bucket of Reef Crystals? Does it have the screw-on lid, or the snap-on lid? Just asking because maybe you have an old batch of salt. The older stuff (screw-on lid) has lower calcium levels than the stuff they're making now.
 
Okay so I'm looking for 2part and I'm only going to use the calcium part. Alright ill start looking for that. Thanks for all the advice! It's really helped me out a lot.

So should I test again this Monday(Monday usually is water change day) and see how much the calc has dropped? I usually do bi weekly water changes. I'm thinking in between the water changes the corals are using up the calcium to grow. I have a red monti that is growing very rapidly and two good sized Birdsnest also. I also have green monti, superman monti, mint green monti. So I suppose I do have quite a few sps trying to suck up all the calcium. The montis are doing well while the acros are dying.

I have the snap on Lid for the reef crystals. The bucket is maybe three months old. I'm almost out so i will be getting a new bucket soon.
 
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