Hammer coral dying?

[Julie1298]

I've been having problems with my hammer coral for the past few weeks and don't know what the problem is. My tank consists of zoas, blasto, acan and hammer corals. They are all doing fine except for this one hammer.

My parameters are:
Alk- 10
Mag- 1410
Cal- 475
PH- 8.2
Salinity- 1.024
Temp- 78-79

Is my alkalinity to high? To much flow/ not enough? Lighting?

Anything helps!

 

[2pawsreefer]

Hmm mine dont do that with flow just aggitation from something what are those purple bumps on the skeleton also the skeletol partof your hammer appears to be growing weird here are mine lower flow they expand out like this higher flow the shrink the head up but tentacles stay out for what its worth i had to much flow once and had a little tear in it and it did that and i dipped it with coral rx hoping it would help with bacterial infections and i never had any problems it healed and is fine hope it gets better also i keep calc between 400 and 450 wouldnt go to much higher

 

[Dom]

If this is the only coral in your tank that is having issues, I would attribute the problem to something in the environment the Hammer doesn't like.

Your water chemistry tests results seem ok.

I'm inclined to think water flow issues or light issues.

Try moving it around the tank to areas where light and flow are different to see if it improves.

The tank looks new in the picture. How old is the tank?

What are your Nitrate and Phosphate numbers?

 

[LiveWire]

I agree. It seems that something is irritating your Hammer and thats why it is not opening up fully.

 

[rkpetersen]

Also consider phosphate too low and excessive use of GAC as possible causes.

 

[DMG Reef]

Also consider phosphate too low and excessive use of GAC as possible causes.

This! I tried moving my euphyllia into a newly set up frag tank. The new tank had a lot of macro algae which was taking up all of the nutrients. I experienced polyp bailout within a few weeks. I moved them back into my main display tank and they recovered. The DT runs about 10 nitrates and .09 phosphates but the frag tank runs undetectable on both. They need nutrients. Good luck!

 

[Julie1298]

If this is the only coral in your tank that is having issues, I would attribute the problem to something in the environment the Hammer doesn't like.

Your water chemistry tests results seem ok.

I'm inclined to think water flow issues or light issues.

Try moving it around the tank to areas where light and flow are different to see if it improves.

The tank looks new in the picture. How old is the tank?

What are your Nitrate and Phosphate numbers?

The tank is 7 months old. I don't have a test kit for phosphates, but my nitrates are 5ppm. I'll try and move it lower in the tank near my other hammer and see I'd it makes a difference.
Thank you!

 

[Julie1298]

Also consider phosphate too low and excessive use of GAC as possible causes.

I don't have a test kit of phosphates, but will be getting one. Also, I don't use GAC, just filter floss and the live rock.
Thanks!

 

[Julie1298]

This! I tried moving my euphyllia into a newly set up frag tank. The new tank had a lot of macro algae which was taking up all of the nutrients. I experienced polyp bailout within a few weeks. I moved them back into my main display tank and they recovered. The DT runs about 10 nitrates and .09 phosphates but the frag tank runs undetectable on both. They need nutrients. Good luck!

Mine experienced polyp bailout around the same time. I'll see if lack of nutrients is the problem.

 

[Dom]

The tank is 7 months old. I don't have a test kit for phosphates, but my nitrates are 5ppm. I'll try and move it lower in the tank near my other hammer and see I'd it makes a difference.
Thank you!

Awesome! Yes; if you have one hammer that's kicking butt and another that is kicking the bucket, it is probably the location.

Moving it to the same location where the thriving hammer is located is a sound idea. If it bounces back, you have your answer.

 

[rkpetersen]

Anything helps!

Also -

 

[Auto-pilot]

Hey welcome to reef2reef!
Ive seen issues like this before and can see it is not doing good. I also noticed from your picture that it is receding up the base. My opinion would lean on possibly a bacterial or some sort of infection causing the tissue to recede. Sometimes corals can become shocked and weakened from either fluctuations in alkalinity that its not used to or other environmental issues. If it were my coral I would dip it in some sort of broad spectrum antibiotic and put it in a darker area of the tank. If it was getting too little light it would slowly become more and more translucent which it is not because it is dark in color. If you changed the flow in your tank and its being blown hard to where you can see it moving all over the place then I would think that might be the problem. One other observation is no phosphate usually causes color loss before tissue loss.
I would attribute this to an unstable alkalinity and a possible bacterial infection.
I had a LARGE frogspawn coral recede due to overdosing carbon causing a brown jelly outbreak. You don't always see evidence of bacteria