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Hammer bleaching?


Wafflecopter

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So im approaching the 1 year mark of my spec 3 reef and have seen growth in all the coral over the past 10 months but ive noticed that my hammer is losing color. Its continuing to grow and has since split into 2 heads both the size of the single head i started with. No other corals are showing signs of discoloration and are continuing to grow aswell. Currently I have a rad. Dragon eye zoa colony, neon green sinularia, trumpet coral (not sure of exact type) the hammer and this month I fell in love with an orange ricordea at the lfs. The pics included are before and after of the hammer. The light im using is a lumini asta 20. Any thoughts on cause and solution? Currently setting up a 10 gallon but it wont be ready for atleast another 4 months. (Trying the BRS/WWC 4 month cycle method) 

20180427_202215.jpg.b03dd2bc83535a29d92e5a2c7cb05f59.jpg

IMG_20190223_222517.jpg

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Has the lighting intensity changed at all?  Are you running carbon or some other type of chemical filtration that made the water more clear causing the light to be more intense?  

 

It looks like it's up on a rock now, but was on the sandbed before.  Maybe try moving it down.  I've had several corals bleach under led, but just had to make adjustments and they recovered.

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Ive left lighting alone and havent been using carbon or dosing anything. Pretty much nothings changed since i added it. I only recently moved it up on the rock withing the past few weeks based on a recomendation from the lfs. My zoas and sinularia have been higher in the tank than the hammer this whole time and theyre still very vibrant. The sinularia is actually quite alot more vibrant than when I got it. I set the light up with very low intensity and left it alone. Im not sure on par as i dont have a meter but i may ask the lfs if they have one to rent if not i may just spend the couple hundred and get one since i definitely want to continue to have larger tanks in the future.

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4 hours ago, Clown79 said:

There are hammers that have purple tips mixed with green.

 

Often called mutant or mottled hammer

 

Does yours look like these? It's hard to tell in the pic

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Yeah it started out looking like the top one when I got it and has slowly turned into a more extreme version of the bottom one. Although in person they dont appear purple but rather fleshy and translucentish. But i noticed when I got it that most of the tips had that splotchy color pattern to them. 

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3 hours ago, Wafflecopter said:

Yeah it started out looking like the top one when I got it and has slowly turned into a more extreme version of the bottom one. Although in person they dont appear purple but rather fleshy and translucentish. But i noticed when I got it that most of the tips had that splotchy color pattern to them. 

Mine originally lightened up when I had it high in my tank and that was under budget lights.

 

Now it's under a Prime but not at the top of the tank and its recovered but changed. More purple less of the mottled green

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I dont want to mess with or change lighting too much because ive had lots of growth in all the other corals especially my trumpet. Ive heard that putting them in a dimly lit area will help increase the zooxanthella populatian since it needs as much photosynthetic help as it can get. The best way to describe it since my camera doesnt take good pictures of my tank is that the amount of green tentacles is becoming less and the green is a very pale green and the rest of the tentacles are a translucent pink color under ambient light when tank lights are off and just tank light color when its on. Could it even be not getting enough flow? Its a 175gph pump which i know is a little on the low side.

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  • 2 months later...

Unless I missed it I haven't seen any post that includes your phosphate and nitrate levels or your alkalinity.

 

The last picture you posted looks like low phosphates to me.

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