Picky Hammer

[mchammer]

I got a hammer coral 2 1/2 weeks ago. the first 2 days it did great, opening up. since then it retracted. I tried moving it to different positions in the tank. Also tried experimenting with different flow (low-med). I currently have it sitting 6" from the light source (72W coralife). No luck. I don't see any sign of sickness. It's just picky or something? Is there any special treatment for this type of coral?

 

20 G

78 F

1.0235 salinity

nitrate, nitrite, amonia =0

ph=8.2

400 maxi jet

600 maxi jet

20 lbs live rocks.

 

livestock:

1 clown

1 cleaner shrimp

1 emerald crab

9 astrea snails

4 hermits

1 orange sea star

1 feathe duster

1 frogspwan (doing great)

1 hammer

[Scott Wilson]

Hammer Coral come from turbid waters so it is best to place this coral deeper in your tank. I have found that I get slow growth in strong current. Place it in moderate current. You can encourage polyp extension if you take some krill and squeeze it and waft the juices over the heads of this coral. This will try to get it into feeding mode and encourage polyp extension. Other than that do not move it around much for the first few months.

 

Let Me know How it is doing.

 

Scott

[mchammer]

Thanks for the tip. I know, I've been very impatient with this coral. I move it around every few days to try and find the sweet spot. I just got my 130W CF hood. I now have the hammer at the bottom of the tank. I also just checked for Nitrate, Nitrite, Phosphate, Calcium, Amonia, Ph. All parameters are normal. I do water changes every week (15%). I think it's just shy or something. I'll going to try your recommendation. I'll let you know.

[mikedege]

mine sits on the bottom of my tank, about 18" inches from water level, it seems to like it there the best(mine is alwasy fully open), it is medium current, and you cant keep moving it around, it seems to become attached to a location(give it time to adapt), i also have 72W lighting.

 

good luck, Mike

[mchammer]

I just upgraded to a 130W CF Hood. The hammer is a the bottom of the tank, about 20" inches from the light source. Is 130W too much for this coral? Does anyone have any success with the hammer under this much lighting?

 

On another note. I bought the 130W CF Hood from aquatraders.com. Here is my personal rating for this hood (scale of 1-10, 10 being best). I give the Odyssea a 6.5 rating. The hood design has a few flaws.

 

Pros:

1) The mounting legs allow for the hood to flip up and out of the way when you want to work in the tank.

2) low cost for high wattage. I paid $82.42 total (include tax, shipping, and mounting legs) for a 130W hood. The cheapest 130W Coralife system that I've seen run $130.

3) I did not have any trouble with the service. The item came within 3 days after I placed the order (priority USPS).

 

Cons:

1) the dual fans are loud.

2) the mounting legs does not fit snug on a 24" lenght tank. The mounting screws are stick out too long.

3) the reflector is cheap compared to Coralife reflector.

4) only one power cord that controt the 12K, blue, and moon lights. You cannot use timers for different light settings. They all turn on and off at the same time.

5) the hood just does not look are pretty and slick as Coralife or Orbit.

 

Bottom line, I think this hood is ok for the price. You get what you paid for, but this hood will do the job.

[mchammer]

Came home today and found my frogspwan shrivel under the 130W CF. The hammer too. Way too much lighting??? the frogspawn was doing fine under the 72W CF. I increased the wattage because I thought it would help my hammer open up. It ended up causing another problem. Also, the Odyssea CF hood from Aquatraders.com sucked! I think I'm going to return it.

[TimR]

Did you acclimate the corals to the higher lighting??? The corals may be reacting to the change in light intensity. Try raising the lights up higher above the tank and slowly lower them down over a week. I have a Frogspawn in a 29 on the bottom with 175 watts of MH. The coral is doing great.

 

In my 29 I had the Frog up high after switching from 130 watts of PC to the MH and the Frog did not like it. This was after accilmating it to the higher intensity. I had to lower it to the bottom to make it happy.

[mchammer]

See before and after pics of my hammer. I also will post a shrinking frog.

[mchammer]

hammer after a couple weeks.

[mchammer]

This is my frog after I went from 72W to 130W CF. You can see that one of the branch shrank. I now have the 103W higher up on the tank. About 20" from the frog. I'm going to let it be for a week and see if the condition improves.

[mchammer]

Here is my tank and light setup. I have one Maxi Jet 400 and one 600 pointing in opossite direction. I hung my 130W from the ceiling.

[Fishtails]

Light is pretty far from the tank itself. Most people running PC's have it 5" max over their tanks. Your's looks like 10"+, which is more than likely the reason your corals are shriveling. Try lowering the hood and see if conditions get better.

[afiser]

yea you should really lower that light;)

[mchammer]

I'm happy to report that I found the cure for all this madness. I installed a protein skimmer. All my problems magically went away. The red algae cleared up, the corals opens and doing much better, the feather duster is growing larger each day. I installed the skimmer about 10 days ago and I can really see a significant difference. The water is very clean and clear. I tried running the tank without a skimmer like a lot of the reefers in this forum, but it did not work as well as I thought.

 

I am a true believer of the protein skimmer and will never start a tank without it. I dose Kent Liquid Calcium (1/2 teaspoon) each morning before the lights are on. I continue to do 10% water change each week. The tank is currently doing awesome.

 

Oh, I did lowered the lights. Thanks