Recently aquired my first hammer coral

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 6, 2017

So just a few questions.. How can i keep a happy hammer coral? He is in my 10 gallon nano. And im just wondering how to keep a happy hammer.. Lol. Such as how much light? How much flow, and water chemistry. How much calcium should be in the tank to up keep its skeleton? I have a test kit for calcium but have not tested for it yet. Will be doing so tomorrow. And if it is lower then needed what steps can i do to make him a happy hammer. Along with feeding. What can i feed if anything to this hammer? Also what are some traits to know hes not so happy? I noticed tonight for whatever reason one branch sucked all the heads in.. What can that mean? It did happen when i fed the tank a nice krill meal.. Could he have just gotten some food and retracted to eat? Just curious in any information. I wanna provide the best possible home for him as possible. I just got him saturday and hes just recovering from a flatworm invasion from the LFS. But this picture of him is two days after his dip and flat worm free. Id apreciate any advice or even links to read up on them. Thank you guys!

moseley75 · Jun 7, 2017

I have a 16 gallon BioCube in which I have a mixed reef with some soft corals a hammer and a trumpet. I like the Red Sea ABC products. My corals all like it best when I follow their mixed reef recipe.
Salinity 34 ppt
Cal 450
Mag 1350
Alk 11.5
Nitrate 1-2
Phosphate .
0.08 - 0.12.

SM_Reef · Jun 7, 2017

I would dip it again just for safe precaution. Are you using Red Sea pro salt? It has a bit higher alk compared to other brands, your LFS could be using a different brand of salt that could have lower alk and your hammer could be slightly stressed from the switch. Euphyllia will readily eat anything your fish would eat if hungry but shouldn't be needed as long as your parameters are fine, which they are. So as long as you keep it all nice and stable and don't have any major swings that hammer should do great! Good luck!

Jack Eskay · Jun 7, 2017

I have a 70 gallon euphelia tank and I've had pretty good growth and had my hammers thrive just off of water changes. As long as you keep up weekly/biweekly water changes you should be fine for hammers and all other euphelia. If your looking for more growth though you can also look into coral food such as polyp lab etc. I've had good results using them. Good luck!

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 7, 2017

SM_Reef said:
I would dip it again just for safe precaution. Are you using Red Sea pro salt? It has a bit higher alk compared to other brands, your LFS could be using a different brand of salt that could have lower alk and your hammer could be slightly stressed from the switch. Euphyllia will readily eat anything your fish would eat if hungry but shouldn't be needed as long as your parameters are fine, which they are. So as long as you keep it all nice and stable and don't have any major swings that hammer should do great! Good luck!

Im going to watch him for a week and see if i see any more crawling around or bruising on his tips if so i will do another dil. As far as salt im just buying saltwater from my LFS so its the same water they use in their tanks i just dont know what kind of salt they use.

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 7, 2017

moseley75 said:
I have a 16 gallon BioCube in which I have a mixed reef with some soft corals a hammer and a trumpet. I like the Red Sea ABC products. My corals all like it best when I follow their mixed reef recipe.
Salinity 34 ppt
Cal 450
Mag 1350
Alk 11.5
Nitrate 1-2
Phosphate .
0.08 - 0.12.

If my calc is low what can i do to get it where is needs to be? What do i add to the tank as well? Still fairly new..

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 7, 2017

Jack Eskay said:
I have a 70 gallon euphelia tank and I've had pretty good growth and had my hammers thrive just off of water changes. As long as you keep up weekly/biweekly water changes you should be fine for hammers and all other euphelia. If your looking for more growth though you can also look into coral food such as polyp lab etc. I've had good results using them. Good luck!

Ive been good on my water changes so far. Once a week every sunday. So thats great news for me!!

A Toadstool Leather · Jun 7, 2017

The key to stony corals is the constant upkeep of alk, ca, and mg. If all three of these are good it will grow well. Make sure not to put other corals near it aside from other hammers and frogspawn.

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 7, 2017

A Toadstool Leather said:
The key to stony corals is the constant upkeep of alk, ca, and mg. If all three of these are good it will grow well. Make sure not to put other corals near it aside from other hammers and frogspawn.

Okay ill read up on that. What are some other easy to keel LPS corals that could be good in a 10 gallon?

Mindi · Jun 7, 2017

Yeah to what you put near it...they are aggressive. I have a Frogspawn next to mine. I find mine like only medium flow and medium light. I dont target feed it but it gets Zooplankton when i blanket feed that. My Barrier Reef Clowns live in it because they dont have an anemone. This is a bi-colour Ancora about 12" across

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 7, 2017

Mindi said:
Yeah to what you put near it...they are aggressive. I have a Frogspawn next to mine. I find mine like only medium flow and medium light. I dont target feed it but it gets Zooplankton when i blanket feed that. My Barrier Reef Clowns live in it because they dont have an anemone. This is a bi-colour Ancora about 12" across

That is amazing.. I love it.

moseley75 · Jun 8, 2017

@ItouchedThebutt you can increase the dose of calcium a bit until your tank gets to the level you want then dose the prescribed amount to maintain. You will have to monitor your tanks daily use and adjust the daily dose accordingly.
Red Sea prints a booklet on how to use their products. I got mine at the LFS for free.
I'm using RedSea in my 16 gal and have been thinking about using AquaForest 1+2+3+ in my new 20x20x20 cube. I like the results I've seen in an sps dominant tank using AquaForest. It's a bit more costly though, so I may just stick w/ RedSea.

ItouchedThebutt · Jun 8, 2017

moseley75 said:
@ItouchedThebutt you can increase the dose of calcium a bit until your tank gets to the level you want then dose the prescribed amount to maintain. You will have to monitor your tanks daily use and adjust the daily dose accordingly.
Red Sea prints a booklet on how to use their products. I got mine at the LFS for free.
I'm using RedSea in my 16 gal and have been thinking about using AquaForest 1+2+3+ in my new 20x20x20 cube. I like the results I've seen in an sps dominant tank using AquaForest. It's a bit more costly though, so I may just stick w/ RedSea.

What do you think about kalwasser from brs? And is that just a one or two part solution? I have a ato i can mix it in and let it add to the tank slowly that way...