Hammer coral slowly falling apart, please help

[HellaDudes]

So I bought this hammer coral about 3 weeks ago. It seemed fine for about a week but started to degrade about 2 weeks back. Some of the tentacles/hammers have been slowly shrinking away and falling off the skeleton, mostly around the outside edges of the coral. They get really thin at the base and get really droopy, unable to support themselves [as seen on bottom left side of coral in photo], they shrink, sometimes shrivel and eventually float away. I was worried I had too much flow so I repositioned the powerhead and not it is in a low/medium flow spot of the tank. Also, the alkalinity was 6.5 the first few days it was in the tank but I slowly raised it to 8.5 over the course of 4 days and have kept the parameters pretty stable for the past couple weeks but the coral seems to exposing just a little more of its skeleton every day, albeit very slowly. The filter currently contains GFO, carbon and purigen and I am running an AI Prime HD 16 at about 30%. All other corals are looking fine.

Has anyone experienced something like this with euphyllia before? What gives? Any theories on how to make this thing happy would be greatly appreciated!

IM 14 gallon
Temp: 77-79 [controlled]
Salinity: 34 ppt
Ph: 8.1
Alkalinity: 8.5 dkh
Calcium: 480 ppm
Magnesium: 1500 ppm
Phosphate: 0.05 ppm
Nitrate: 4 ppm

 

[Webslinger]

kalk in ato? looks ok but keep all other coral away from it.

 

[HellaDudes]

kalk in ato? looks ok but keep all other coral away from it.

Yeah, I have a low demand for alk cuz the corals are all new so I am using just 1/4 tsp per gallon of BRS kalk in the ATO

 

[Webslinger]

They like flow from underneath might want to move it if theres a rock on it's side till it gets a few more heads

 

[HellaDudes]

They like flow from underneath might want to move it if theres a rock on it's side till it gets a few more heads

Flow from underneath? interesting, i hadn't heard that. makes sense though. it doesn't seems to like getting water blasted down at it even a little bit. hammers definitely seem like one of the more picky corals when it comes to flow...

 

[serwobow]

Not sure how far away it is from the light, but it looks like it is high up in the picture. All my hammers are down low in the corners, and they seem to like it like that (around 100 par). Also, the only time I have seen polyps falling off is when the nutrients were very low. Your numbers look good, but test kits can be wrong. It might help to raise your nutrients, either by dosing or by stopping the GFO and purigen for a while.

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Hello

I think it looks fine. I think a bit stronger light may help color it up a bit. The polyps are extending up stretching for light. I would move it up 1 level. They respond pretty quick to change. If it doesn’t like the move, put it back to where it is now. But right now skeleton looks fine, looks healthy to me. I kept mine in the top third of my 180 and they were always neon green

@Flippers4pups

 

[HellaDudes]

Hello

I think it looks fine. I think a bit stronger light may help color it up a bit. The polyps are extending up stretching for light. I would move it up 1 level. They respond pretty quick to change. If it doesn’t like the move, put it back to where it is now. But right now skeleton looks fine, looks healthy to me. I kept mine in the top third of my 180 and they were always neon green

@Flippers4pups

Thanks for the response! I will probably try turning the light intensity up a little and see if it helps. I don't want to move it up because the flow it too strong at the top for my monti cap.

I included a photo of a different angle. It may look okay, but seeing pieces of it shrivel up and fall off is still kinda concerning... I dunno, maybe I am over reacting and it will just recover.

It is also worth mentioning that I have seen it excreting some brown stingy stuff from what seems to be the mouth [as you can see in the photo]. I read online that it is excreting zooxanthellae, but other think it is just pooping. Any opinion on that?

 

[HellaDudes]

Not sure how far away it is from the light, but it looks like it is high up in the picture. All my hammers are down low in the corners, and they seem to like it like that (around 100 par). Also, the only time I have seen polyps falling off is when the nutrients were very low. Your numbers look good, but test kits can be wrong. It might help to raise your nutrients, either by dosing or by stopping the GFO and purigen for a while.

I will double check my phosphate and reduce chemical filtration if they seem low. tbh, havent tested phosphate and nitrate in a week or so. thanks for the reply!

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Sounds like a plan.

Remember slow changes. It looks like the monti is doing good. You don’t want to mess with the light setting for the hammer and hurt the monti. The brown is just waste.