Hammer Coral shrinking (with pictures)

[Putzyjd]

Hi everybody I purchased this frag at a lfs in Denver and it was doing really good for about a month now for some reason just the green hammer Coral is closing up and it's been closed for about three days. If anybody has any suggestions as to why it's closed I'd like to know thanks. 

 

----Tank stats----

30gallon 

Salinity 1.025

Mg 1260ppm

Alk 8.4dKH

Ca 480ppm

Nitrate 0-2ppm

Temp 78.5°F

 

 

[weston.bechtold]

Tests look good so it is hard to say... maybe a parasite?  Did you dip the coral in solution before introducing it into your tank?

[Putzyjd]

2 hours ago, weston.bechtold said:

Tests look good so it is hard to say... maybe a parasite?  Did you dip the coral in solution before introducing it into your tank?

No I did not. I purchased 8 frags from the same store out of the same tank. I didn't have any Coral before that in the tank so I figured I wouldn't bother with dipping them. But I did have vermetid snails growing on one frag I purchased. Some people said they were ok and some people said they destroy Coral so I broke off the snails and killed them just to be safe. I wonder if they are what's causing it to close up? I haven't seen any since I killed the ones on the one frag. They build a tube and emit this slime on a string to catch algea particles. I haven't seen any slime stings since though.

[Clown79]

Unfortunately dipping coral is more to prevent introducing anything into the tank. Hitchhikers etc.

 

 

[ReefSafeSolutions]

The only potential thing I can think of (and I really doubt this would be a problem) is that magnesium *might* be a little low, which *might* prevent alk/ca stability.  But I don't think that's the problem at all, since your other hammer there looks fine.  I mean we're talking 50-100ppm lower, likely a non-issue.  Every time I have an alk/ca problem, all the euphyllia in my tank let me know, not just one.

 

Any chance you might have nicked some flesh of the coral when removing the snails?

 

 

[Putzyjd]

On 12/8/2017 at 1:37 AM, Clown79 said:

Unfortunately dipping coral is more to prevent introducing anything into the tank. Hitchhikers etc.

 

 

I definitely should have dipped all my Coral I just bought some Coral Rx I'm gonna dip all my corals even though it's kinda too late.

[Putzyjd]

On 12/9/2017 at 9:15 AM, ReefSafeSolutions said:

The only potential thing I can think of (and I really doubt this would be a problem) is that magnesium *might* be a little low, which *might* prevent alk/ca stability.  But I don't think that's the problem at all, since your other hammer there looks fine.  I mean we're talking 50-100ppm lower, likely a non-issue.  Every time I have an alk/ca problem, all the euphyllia in my tank let me know, not just one.

 

Any chance you might have nicked some flesh of the coral when removing the snails?

 

 

I didn't have any snails on these corals I have no idea what caused it but both of my hammer corals got brown jelly and died I tried saving a polyp but it didn't work.