Is it Hammer time?

ZipAdeeZoa · Feb 21, 2020

Sorry guys, I couldn't resist;Hilarious

So a little background. I have a fluval evo 13.5 gallon which has been running for a little over a year now and in that time I've had a coral Quarantine tank running since at one point I had a fish and was worried about fish disease but since that fish passed and I've decided to go invert only its just become a place to monitor them, get a feel for their light preferences and growth rates/ address any hitchhikers etc. I have a few batches of corals in there at the moment.

After successfully maintaining 6 corals for a few months and seeing new growth and becoming more confident in my ability to look after these animals I decided to indulge and treated myself to some new corals when the company I buy all my corals from had a sale. One of these corals was a splatter hammer- a coral I had long wanted but was worried I'd not be able to keep one happy since they are little harder than the corals I have now (zoa's, nepthea, blastos and pipe organ). Unfortunately it was't meant to be- a storm had other plans and after 3 days of being caught in shipping limbo the hammer was effectively DOA along with some clove polyps (not bad out 9 corals though). It also seemed that the hammer brought with it black bugs which was dealt with albeit stressful- no corals were lost.

So now I have a credit and website has been updated and there were two hammers I really liked- one is now gone to my indecisiveness but I've never seen one like that before, it was a subtle blue and pink and I'm honestly pretty bummed I missed since I've only seen one like that in the past year;Dead.

I'm toying with the thought of trying some hammers again but I'm nervous about a few things- I use Coral Pro salt by redsea and although I plan on switching at some point I've read that hammers don't do well at higher DKH

I also have an upcoming trip and will be gone for two weeks (March 7- March 21st) and so If I were to get some hammers before I left I would only have until march 7th to observe and deal with any issues that could come up.

Obviously the largest concern would be the negative impacts coral pest could inflict on to my existing corals which I can't yet move to the DT until the hair algae in there is defeated (almost there).

So here I am, looking for council from my friends on R2R on what the best path to follow would be. Thanks in advance!

Gareth elliott · Feb 21, 2020

I love euphylia they can be very forgiving of water chemistry and light. But they can be very aggressive as they have long sweeper tentacles. They are not incredibly fast growing. That if you could space it away from other corals in the qt and was only a head or 2 should be fine till moved to the dt before it started growing.

As far as alkalinity if they are acclimated to the higher alkalinity, they usually do fine as long as its stable. Only issues ive ever had with them:
1

Ive bleached them moving to high light too quickly. Was fixable went from white back to its regular color in a few weeks.
2

alkalinity swings( as long as not a giant increase at once they usually look unhappy for a bit giving you a window to correct with a water change)
3). Flow they are often in weaker flow in lfs frag tanks, can handle higher flow. Just need time to get used to it.

Bfragale · Feb 21, 2020

My hammer and torches are my favorite. My alk is 10.3 dKH. And they are doing great

Noob_reefer · Feb 21, 2020

I say go for it! Hammers are pretty forgiving and add nice movement to your tank

ZipAdeeZoa · Feb 23, 2020

Thanks guys!

Thats all really encouraging to hear! Unfortunately (once again) my indecisiveness got the better of me and both hammers are no longer available. In all honesty after talking it through with my girl friend- she reminded me how stressed I was when I thought I was going to loose all my corals to the black bugs and tonight I sat in font of the QT tank for about half an hour before I realized she's right, I just care to much about my current corals to risk subjecting them to the same thing or possibly something worse again.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed and for sharing your awesome hammers! When the time is right I will certainly be getting a few, its good to know they seem to be hardier than I thought they were. I'm much less nervous about getting some now