Hammer coral help.

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 6, 2016

Hello guys, so I have had my hammer coral for about a month now and at the beginning it used to open up really big and look like a little tree swaying around. The skeleton (base) was hardly even visible. Now it won't come out the same, it comes out about 50% of the way as it used to. The flow is the same, the lighting is the same and the tank's chemistry is the same. Any idea would could be causing this? oh and i Also bumped it once about two weeks ago with my stilaphora, (forgive the spelling), not too bad, but one or two little "hammers" did fall off. No visible signs of damage now though.

nitrates 0
Phosphates 0
Alk 8.4
Cal 460
PH 8.1
Temp 78
Sal 1.025
Mag 1400
Par around it is at 97-110

Diesel · Dec 6, 2016

Well sir, you starving your Hammer with Po4 and No3 at 0.0.
That said not sure how long that is going on but either way try to spot feed it with all pumps of for 5 min.
Do this every day and see if you get improvements.
You par ain't that bad but maybe a little more can't hurt either.

john.m.cole3 · Dec 6, 2016

@Diesel called it. Zero nutrients = zero color and bad symptoms. Before we begin to give advice, please list your methods of nutrient export. You might be able to make adjustments with the equipment you aleady own. I think it is important to be able to strip the water of all nutrients if a mishap occurs, but typically we want some nitrate and phosphate to some degree. Based on your alkalinity reading, nitrates would do best between 2-10 and phosphates prob between .02 and .06

Is th e majortity of the tank LPS? What size tank? and what lighting? all of this information helps to better paint a visual picture for the reader. Thanks and I hope we can get you to the bottom of things.

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 6, 2016

Diesel said:
Well sir, you starving your Hammer with Po4 and No3 at 0.0.
That said not sure how long that is going on but either way try to spot feed it with all pumps of for 5 min.
Do this every day and see if you get improvements.
You par ain't that bad but maybe a little more can't hurt either.

Haha. Yeah I had been battling some hair algea im trying to raise that. The color looksthe same on it though and I've been dosing the red sea aminos and vitamins. Kinda hard to spot feed since my tank is 3ft deep. You think the aminos would help such a low nutrient state?

Diesel · Dec 6, 2016

Osiel Alvarado said:
Haha. Yeah I had been battling some hair algea im trying to raise that. The color looksthe same on it though and I've been dosing the red sea aminos and vitamins. Kinda hard to spot feed since my tank is 3ft deep. You think the aminos would help such a low nutrient state?

It's not only AA but straight out some extra fish poop does miracles.
Many refer to the Diesel Brew that I make but I wonder myself sometimes if I mention it myself hobbyist think I have secrets in this hobby.
Well, maybe I do but here you have my Diesel brew,......
I use Larry's frozen reef frenzy, mix that with frozen Mysis, add some reef chilly and Oyster feast with that.
On top of that a few drops of Aqua Forest vitamins, and AA.
All that I let sit for a few minutes and slowly with a spoon I feed the fish and the reef at the same time.
Oh and in the morning and evening I dose 12ml straight No3.

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 6, 2016

I didn't know you could dose No3. how do you do that? you do the Diesel brew once a day? that sounds awesome.

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 6, 2016

it's actually majority SPS frags right now. it is a 120 gallon tank. plus a 40 gallon sump. dimensions are 36W, 36T, 24L. Lighting is two AI hydra HD's with two T5 supplement bulbs. using the ATI blue plus on a retrofit setup inside my canopy.
I have a classic 150 octopus skimmer and I'm running GFO and carbon. Ive been dosing the redsea NoPox and brought the nitrates down pretty quick and have been having difficulty raising them up. I didn't want to completely stop the no pox due to that hair algae that appeared so for I've been dosing 3ml a day into the sump. Also vibrant once a week at the recommended 1ml per 10gallons of water. For color I dose the Redsea color care program ABCD based on my calcium uptake. Flow is powered by 3 mp40's set at about 50% on the nutrient transport setting.

Whipples · Dec 7, 2016

Vibrant will eliminate your nitrates pretty fast. Between that and the nopox any nitrate you dose initially may be consumed nearly instantly due to the backlog of bacterial matter in the tank. Dosing NO3 via Spectracide stump remover or KNO3 is not entirely common but has demonstrated positive results for folks. Use the search button for spectracide or KNO3 and there are several threads frequented by Randy Holmes-Farley on dosing and methodology and when/why to use it. I have tons of KNO3 laying around from dosing freshwater planted tanks, which is what Spectracide uses and can be had for cheaper than the hardware store online if you are willing to wait a few days for shipping from Green Leaf Aquariums. There are a few calculators who will tell you how much to mix into RODI water and how much 1ml of this solution will raise PPM nitrate based on tank volume and the ppm of the solution you will make.

A word of caution: begin dosing KNO3 in very small amounts and test. If you dose 1ppm today and tomorrow it is 0, dose 1ppm again. After dosing, it only takes about 10-15 minutes for it to register in your tank so you can double check your math that way, or conversely check the accuracy of your nitrate test. You want to make small, incremental changes otherwise you risk going too far with it and potentially introducing problems. You will also want to keep an eye on your PO4 levels as dosing KNO3, depending on the bacterial backlog, may cause PO4 to crash as the microbiome in your tank uptakes the nitrates and phosphates together.

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 7, 2016

Question. Im about to add 16 clowns. Would that help?

Whipples · Dec 7, 2016

16 clowns will definitely add to the bioload which will help feed the corals, but you may have aggression issues/other issues if you introduce them all at once without a strong and established biofilter to help process the extra waste. May not be a big deal in a 120G tank off the bat, but keep an eye on ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in case you cause a mini cycle.

Clown harem tanks are awesome, post pics!

Osiel Alvarado · Dec 7, 2016

Whipples said:
16 clowns will definitely add to the bioload which will help feed the corals, but you may have aggression issues/other issues if you introduce them all at once without a strong and established biofilter to help process the extra waste. May not be a big deal in a 120G tank off the bat, but keep an eye on ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in case you cause a mini cycle.

Clown harem tanks are awesome, post pics!

Ill definitely keep an eye on ammonia then. Hope they don't destroy each other lol. ill definitely be posting some pictures here. Thank you to everyone that took their time to help me out.