Hammer randomly died

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

My recently added hammer coral went from perfectly happy to near dead in 24 hours is there a disease in my tank? Our water perameters are all good and the temperature is 76 degrees. It is white on the outside and slightly tan in the middle but there is still little hammer heads hanging down the side.

Blackice615 · Mar 31, 2019

Did you acclimate the hammer? How long has your tank been established? What are your params? Those are the three biggest items when it comes to these

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

Yes we acclimated it and everything else we bought that day is all happy. Our tank is almost a year old. Phosphate and nitrite are both 0. Nitrate was a little less than 5ppm. Calcium is 440. kH is 7 (it has always been our trouble perimeter we struggled to get it down from 15 a few months ago).

Blackice615 · Mar 31, 2019

That's helpful. Generally speaking, from experience they like established tanks. When I first tried hammers and frogspawn, they all died however now they're thriving. What about your flow on it?

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

We had a pretty heavy flow on it. We have a happy frogspawn and torch in the tank already.

Fudsey · Mar 31, 2019

They don't care for heavy flow IME. Flow, yes but not whipping it around heavy.

Blackice615 · Mar 31, 2019

Sometimes they're sensitive

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

It wasnt whipping it around. It was probably 6 inches away from the power head.

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

Maybe it was more sensitive because it was small?

Hemmdog · Mar 31, 2019

Do you have any angels, butterfly’s, other non reef safe fish? My flame angel decimates euphillia.

Mastiffsrule · Mar 31, 2019

Notice and brown stuff?

In my tank I have had hammers at all levels, flow, lighting. I have had in high nitrates and phosphates. It could brown jelly, bugs, or sometimes a branch in my colony would just die. If I frag of the dead branch everything is fine. If I leave the dead one in the colony others start to die. Never figured it out, happens random,y over the years.

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

We just got our first fish in there but it was after the hammer already started looking bad. All reef safe fish. I thought it was brown jelly so I took it out for a second to smell it because that’s one way I read you could tell but it didn’t smell bad just like salt water.

Mastiffsrule · Mar 31, 2019

Sorry about that. I have had large colonies with no issues for years start dying. Pulled the dead branch and it stops. Never found anything explaining why

Rjukan · Mar 31, 2019

Dont give up on it, my hammer looked even worse than that, basically just skeleton and after a few months it started coming back. I was amazed.

Mastiffsrule · Mar 31, 2019

Don’t give up on them. They can be awesome once the start branching

Allybug903 · Mar 31, 2019

Should I leave it in even if I’m nervous about it having a disease?

Rjukan · Mar 31, 2019

I would leave it, but that's just my opinion. If I took mine out when I thought it died I wouldn't be enjoying the comeback it's making.

Mastiffsrule · Mar 31, 2019

If you can still see something on the skeleton leave it in for a day or 2. If it is totally white, pull it. Anything on it would already be in tank anyway. I would only be concered if you had other hammers in the area.

Did you dip it prior?

Blackice615 · Mar 31, 2019

Yes, the smaller they are, the more sensitive they seem

Allybug903 · Apr 1, 2019

We had a fish die today also it’s getting hard to want to keep adding stuff when it feels like everything dies without a purpose. I did a full test with a 1/3 water change and everything looked fine. I don’t know why fish dying hits me so hard but I’m probably gonna take a break with it all for a while.