Is my hammer coral ok?

[daer119]

My wife and I are new to the hobby and we recently got our first hammer. But it just doesn’t look right to us. We’ve tried to move it around the tank a few places to see if it does better but it doesn’t seem to be happy to us. Does it look ok? It’s at the bottom and is getting lower flow and light. Temp is 80 and will post tank parameters. Any help and suggestions on it is appreciated. Again it is new to the tank as well so am I just being impatient?

 

[Chrisv.]

How mature is your tank? How long has it been in your system? Every time you move it you're asking it to adapt again! Any idea what the par is there? If not, can you describe your lighting/settings?

I know it's tempting, but unless a coral is in dire straits, I suggest keeping your hands out of the tank and giving the coral time to adapt.

 

[gbroadbridge]

My wife and I are new to the hobby and we recently got our first hammer. But it just doesn’t look right to us. We’ve tried to move it around the tank a few places to see if it does better but it doesn’t seem to be happy to us. Does it look ok? It’s at the bottom and is getting lower flow and light. Temp is 80 and will post tank parameters. Any help and suggestions on it is appreciated. Again it is new to the tank as well so am I just being impatient?

I'm not sure how you're testing phosphates, but zero is not good for corals. Your nitrates are fine.
You should target PO4 around 0.03--0.06 or so.

In a new tank with dry rock/sand, the substrate will absorb PO4 from the water so you may need to add phosphate.

 

[Chrisv.]

You can feed done reef roids if you want to boost phosphate.

 

[sam2110]

There's a number of things that can effect it.... it don't look that bad, how long has it been in the tank some corals can take a week or even more to adapt to your water parameters. If the light is to low it won't be happy and imo I would look at your salt levels again 1.023 is a bit on the low side. Hammers are not that fussy with flow but I find my Hammers do better in medium flow. Every time you move it it needs to be allowed to settle again.

 

[Clown2020]

I would give it 1-2 weeks to settle in and try not to change any parameters or move the coral until after that.

The good thing is that it is opening, my experience has been that hammers are pretty tough, when I got my hammer it was delayed in shipping so took 3 days to reach me was fully retracted and had half a head bail out. All I did was stick it in the water and hope for the best and it did fine each week it started to look a little better and I suspect the same will happen for you given time.

if something were overly wrong it should either close up or the polyps will bail out of the skeleton

 

[daer119]

There's a number of things that can effect it.... it don't look that bad, how long has it been in the tank some corals can take a week or even more to adapt to your water parameters. If the light is to low it won't be happy and imo I would look at your salt levels again 1.023 is a bit on the low side. Hammers are not that fussy with flow but I find my Hammers do better in medium flow. Every time you move it it needs to be allowed to settle again.

I have probably had it for close to 3 weeks. But I feel like an idiot because I have been moving it around, had to much flow and then none. I’ll check that stuff out, and glad to hear it’s not too bad yet.

 

[daer119]

I would give it 1-2 weeks to settle in and try not to change any parameters or move the coral until after that.

The good thing is that it is opening, my experience has been that hammers are pretty tough, when I got my hammer it was delayed in shipping so took 3 days to reach me was fully retracted and had half a head bail out. All I did was stick it in the water and hope for the best and it did fine each week it started to look a little better and I suspect the same will happen for you given time.

if something were overly wrong it should either close up or the polyps will bail out of the skeleton

Thanks for the info! And glad to hear that it doesn’t look to far gone. I have been moving it a lot trying to get it happy and sounds like I’ve been doing more harm than good.

 

[daer119]

I'm not sure how you're testing phosphates, but zero is not good for corals. Your nitrates are fine.
You should target PO4 around 0.03--0.06 or so.

In a new tank with dry rock/sand, the substrate will absorb PO4 from the water so you may need to add phosphate.

My LFS did the testing.. I’ll definitely add some phosphate or something to it then. Thank you!

 

[daer119]

How mature is your tank? How long has it been in your system? Every time you move it you're asking it to adapt again! Any idea what the par is there? If not, can you describe your lighting/settings?

I know it's tempting, but unless a coral is in dire straits, I suggest keeping your hands out of the tank and giving the coral time to adapt.

It’s only about 2 1/2 months old. I was taking it slow with adding stuff but then saw the hammer and lfs has this gigantic colony that looks amazing and when they said they had frags I couldn’t help myself. And they’ve been walking me through everything and testing as we go. Added some cleaning crew and clowns first then corals later. I’m not sure about the par, but here’s my schedule with the ai reef prime. And that seems to be the general consensus I need to just stop moving the dang thing around trying to make it happy!