A bit of help with my new hammer

mallorieGgator · Jan 23, 2012

Hey all!
I got an awesome orange hammer yesterday that was fragged the day before. It was extended past the skeleton on top and was recovering nicely. I acclimated it and did a 15 minute dip in Revive last night. It is only slightly coming out and the skeleton shows on the top. Color is still good. The tank is a 125 with 4 T5 fixture and it is in the bottom 1/3 of the tank in medium flow. Is there anything I can do to help it recover from the stress? Should it be in lower lighting or flow? All other corals are good. My parameters are:
Ca 440
Mg 1320
Alk 7.7
Am, trite, trate 0 ppm
Salinity 1.025.5
Phosphates- a bit high- I'm going to be running biopellets here soon when my reactor comes in. Also, I believe it is due to my sand bed that I got used- but cleaned- maybe not cleaned enough.

FaviaFreak · Jan 23, 2012

give it moderate/low flow and mod/low light and cross your fingers, I frag a lot of wall hammers and I'd say I have about a 80% success rate with full recovery. There seems to be some hammers that don't frag well the (toxic greens always crap out on me) and others that you could smash on the ground to frag and they will still make it. i have yet to frag a orange wall hammer (don't have the nerve yet) although I did frag an orange branching indo hammer that 100% crapped out

just keep an eye out for infection and hope for the best maybe do an 10-15min iodine dip tomorrow for added protection against bacterial infection setting in

brannock_16 · Jan 23, 2012

+1 to moving it to low flow and moderate light.

I recently bought a small 1 head frag of a Lemon Tip hammer from my local club Christmas party and it reacted the same way. I dipped it for 8 minutes in a dip and then placed it in a low flow, moderate light area where it was immediately recessed and had a bit of skeleton showing. It is now fully inflated and opens beautifully...they just get irritated and withdrawn.

Keep us posted on how yours does.

mallorieGgator · Jan 23, 2012

Thanks! How do I make the iodine dip? I have lugols already but I'm not sure how concentrated to make it. Hopefully it makes it for me.

cdness · Jan 23, 2012

Lower lighting for the start and lower flow. You can increase it over time. They are hardy so don't worry. Mine have been stressed after fragging too and survive just fine.

mallorieGgator · Jan 23, 2012

I moved it to a low light and low flow area. I was looking at it before I moved it and I believe it was getting beaten by too much flow as well. How would I know if it had a bacterial infection?

FaviaFreak · Jan 24, 2012

mallorieGgator said:
I moved it to a low light and low flow area. I was looking at it before I moved it and I believe it was getting beaten by too much flow as well. How would I know if it had a bacterial infection?

more than likely if a bacterial infection sets in it will show up as brown jelly and you'll be able to tell right away