Question on Hammer Coral

[amteo]

I got a hammer coral last weekend. It is a medium size one with two heads. As expected, initially it did not open up. But after a day or so, it begain to open up. However, only one head is opening. The other head looks like it is shrinking!

Should I wait a few more days to see if the other head will open up? or Should I do something else?

[sps_dude]

IMO... u should just leave it be for a few more days...... is the tissue of the shrunken hammer receding...... ie u can see the skeletons ..????if you can see the skeleton or worst brown jelly... u need to frag it...

[wayne]

any picture??

[Clownfish]

make sure that head can receive sufficient light n not blocked by stg else....

[Lester]

hi ....

any idea on how to keep hammer healthy..and to open up??

wat does it feed on ???

Cheers

[amteo]

Just an update.

Came back from work and found the "shrinking head" shrunk even more! I've rearrange it so that the "shrinking head" is now being directly lit. Hope this helps.

[livebait]

Dosing of strontium & trace elements would also help

[kareen]

amteo : What is your water parameters? Hammer coral belong to LPS, therefore require a lower temperature and better water parameters. The water parameters refers to are, at least the salinity, Ca, KH and maybe the Mg. I don't know how experience you are so I dare not talk much here.

[amteo]

amteo : What is your water parameters? Hammer coral belong to LPS, therefore require a lower temperature and better water parameters. The water parameters refers to are, at least the salinity, Ca, KH and maybe the Mg. I don't know how experience you are so I dare not talk much here.

Hi ya Karen,

Experience wise, not that much. Only about a couple of year. Water parameters looks OK to me (data from last weekends test).

Salinity - 1.023

Ca - 430 mg/li

KH - 7deg dK

Mg - 1230 ppm

Temp - 27 to 28 deg C

Anyway, if parameters are out, how come only one head is affected? The other head seems to be doing fine. I suspect that the head might be damaged either during packing, transporting or unpacking.

[shoelevy]

i dun tink this is the reason for your problem but jus to tell u your kh is low

boost it up to 10

i've had your Ca level and kh maintained at 10 every week with 2x250W lights and dose trace element and Strontium and iodine and coral food faithfully every week

beleive it or not, my hammer and frowspawn each with initially 4 heads keep fission until now,they each have 8 heads in a matter of at most 4 weeks

for your problem, i jus encountered this with an unhealthy specimen of hammer i bought but i bought it anyway cos it was really cheap and i thought i could nurse it

initially it was one head that did not open no matter how long...then this head melted away in 1 day so i didn't have a chance to frag it

in a couple of days time, the others followed and i had to throw the whole coral away

IMO, mine is simply an unhealthy specimen

you can use my xperience to compare with yours...perhaps (how ever unpleasant it is) its the same thing that is happening

[diabolus]

its best to frag away the dying portion if it continues to recede.

If its brown jelly infection, very soon it will spread to the healthy portion.

[shoelevy]

i did a search on src but i found no articles nor pictures about brown jelly infection

so can someone post a picture or give a link to a website so that we may learn to indentify this disease?

[kareen]

Hi ya Karen,

Experience wise, not that much. Only about a couple of year. Water parameters looks OK to me (data from last weekends test).

Salinity - 1.023

Ca - 430 mg/li

KH - 7deg dK

Mg - 1230 ppm

Temp - 27 to 28 deg C

Anyway, if parameters are out, how come only one head is affected? The other head seems to be doing fine. I suspect that the head might be damaged either during packing, transporting or unpacking

Oic....maybe a higher KH might help like what shoelevy said. I also experience some head die off.... I bought a big hammer at a real cheap price and it didn't too look good at the LFS but I bought it anyway. Today (2 plus mths), the hammer is opening big but I have 2 dead heads actually......

[kareen]

attach are some photos of my hammer taken minutes ago using HP carmera..... Can anyone tell me will more heads continue to die?

[kareen]

another view from top

[kareen]

another, side view..... can see one dead head.....

[shoelevy]

hey sis...whether other heads will die depends

that's y u must monitor the heads near to the one that is or has already died

if the death spreads, u must frag and throw away those heads that are affected, that's the only way to keep the others from dying

i'm not sure if lugol dip will help...anyway, i had a 3head hammer, 1 died and i didn't frag...then the other 2 after 3 days started dying off...had i fragged off that dying one i think i might have saved the other 2

so you must be careful and check

[kareen]

ok.... I will keep a close eye on it.... but very dangerous to frag off the dead head IMO..... not careful kena the healthy one then worst off....... I employ the good condition everything will be okay kind of altitude.

[RAV-65]

The hammer looks okay for now... the dead-head could be due to too strong current??

[kareen]

thanks for suggusting that but in my case no. That postion is the furthest away from the sweeping 135 degree return pump and so does the other 2 seio 820 that is put on timer.

[RAV-65]

Sufficient light??

[kareen]

2 * 150W MH for a 2 feet depth. I think should be enough for the stuffs I am keeping. Anyway, my logical explaination to the 2 dead head could be highly due to the poor condition in LFS when I first purchase it..... I didn't really bother about it till I learn that it might spread......

[RAV-65]

2 * 150W MH for a 2 feet depth. I think should be enough for the stuffs I am keeping. Anyway, my logical explaination to the 2 dead head could be highly due to the poor condition in LFS when I first purchase it..... I didn't really bother about it till I learn that it might spread......

Alright... normall when the water parameters are fine, they dun spread.. best of luck!

[kareen]

Alright... normall when the water parameters are fine, they dun spread.. best of luck!

Thanks.