Unhappy Hammer

[Alphasig293]

Not sure what's up with my hammer. I have attached a picture. Any and all advice is welcome. He is under Kessil 360s in a shaded part of the tank.

 

[TheEngineer]

I tend to see that when nutrients are very low. What are your nitrates?

 

[Alphasig293]

NO3 is 0.00

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

Do you have any peppermint shrimp in the tank?

 

[TheEngineer]

NO3 is 0.00

That's a problem. They need nutrients in the water. How many fish in the tank? Are you running any chemical filtration?

 

[Alphasig293]

No peppermint shrimp.

3 - Damsels
2 clowns
1 - wrasse
1 - Picasso trigger

 

[Alphasig293]

Also I have a protein skimmer, so no chemical filtration

 

[TheEngineer]

That should be sufficient for some nutrients in there. Do you feed daily? You could feed more heavily to get nutrients up or you could dose.

 

[Alphasig293]

Yea I feed every day. I have a decent amount of crabs, snails, etc. my phosphates are a little high and i do dose to get them back under control. Anything else I should do?

 

[Alphasig293]

I'll look to target feed also.

 

[Dan I]

I never had this problem before, however I did learn about low nutrients in tanks and how that affects corals. If everything is in check and your nutrients are low, maybe look into dosing nitrates. Helped my tank a lot when I started to.

 

[TheEngineer]

Yea I feed every day. I have a decent amount of crabs, snails, etc. my phosphates are a little high and i do dose to get them back under control. Anything else I should do?

What are you dosing?

 

[Alphasig293]

Phosphate Rx

 

[TheEngineer]

The Phosphate Rx might be part, or all, of the problem. What is your alk?

From an older post:

Lanthanum (as in products like this one) does bind phosphate, but unless you catch the precipitated lanthanum phosphate in a filter, it just stays in the tank. Lanthanum is also not without its potential drawbacks, including reports of impacts on reef creatures. It also lowers alkalinity somewhat (by precipitating lanthanum carbonate).

IMO, it is a good product for stripping phosphate from live rock outside of an aquarium, but I prefer other methods for exporting phosphate from a reef aquarium. That said, some people use it to good effect in their aquaria.

This has more on it and many other methods of phosphate reduction:

https://www.reef2reef.com/blog/phosphate-in-the-reef-aquarium-by-randy-holmes-farley/

This is the section covering lanthanum:

Soluble Metals to Bind Phosphate

There are several approaches that add soluble metals to bind and precipitate phosphate. The most popular involves adding lanthanum, which precipitates as lanthanum phosphate and/or lanthanum carbonate (which itself may contain some lanthanum phosphate). The lanthanum approach is widely used in the pool industry to reduce phosphate, and seems to often work well in aquaria. It is also very inexpensive, using products such as Seaklear (make sure it is a pure lanthanum version as mixtures with other metals also exist). Note that this method reduces alkalinity, as removing carbonate and phosphate as a lanthanum precipitate will reduce alkalinity.

One way to use it is to drip is slowly just upstream of a particulate filter to catch and remove a substantial amount of the precipitate that is formed. One drawback to the lanthanum approach is that much of the precipitated material may escape capture and simply settle out in the system somewhere. That may not be an issue, but many aquarists do not prefer to accumulate such material. A second concern is that some people have observed problematic reactions from aquarium inhabitants. While there are not a lot of such stories, it is enough for many aquarists to look for other options.

However, due to its low cost, this approach is especially well suited to outside of the tank operations, such as the removal of excess phosphate from phosphate-contaminated calcium carbonate rock that is later to be added to a reef aquarium.

Soluble iron has also been used in this way, but not nearly so often as lanthanum.

 

[burtbollinger]

alk. swings?

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

My hammers seem to do okay when nitrates are 0 and phosphate <= 0.04 ppm. I'm not sure the lack of nitrates are the issue. However, I have seen that some corals seem to be, at times, sensitive to the lanthanum chloride. My alveopora really didn't like the lanthanum chloride at first.

 

[Alphasig293]

No my alk is at 11

 

[Steffan1]

It happens. Euphelia are more sensitive than trade lets on. Some last a long time and grow super well. Others dissipate after 2-4 mos. walls usually tougher than branching but once a head recedes it's usually gone, often via "brown jelly." Snip head and hope others heads remain healthy.