New Hammer Coral dying? HELP ME SAVE IT

[SomeHappyFish]

Yesterday





This afternoon

Temp acclimated.
Dip in revive 5min.
Low flow, medium light. 150par


Acan, zoa, kenya, Gorgo all seem to be doing fine !

 

[SomeHappyFish]

Pulled out the coral, it smell rotten and looked like it had brown jelly... I blew with with a pipette and the whole coral when flying out... Its dead.

I will be testing my parameters and doing a waterchange to be safe.

 

[JGT]

Your tank looks very new. Mighta been a bit too soon for a hammer.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

Your tank looks very new. Mighta been a bit too soon for a hammer.

Thanks for the input! How long should I wait?

 

[fushi]

Yesterday

This afternoon

Temp acclimated.
Dip in revive 5min.
Low flow, medium light. 150par


Acan, zoa, kenya, Gorgo all seem to be doing fine !

As mentioned above the tank looks pretty new and with dry marco rock which is notorious for absorbing phosphates, you should check your phosphates and nitrates, 0 phosphates will kill a coral. Shoot for 5ppm -10ppm nitrate and 0.05 - 0.1ppm phosphate. LPS tend do well with higher nutrients.

You can wait until your tank is stable before adding stony corals which can take a few months to a year (every tank is different, live rock will speed things up) or you can commit to testing every day and keeping your Alkalinity, nitrate, and phosphate stable.

A KFC dip may help save the coral but probably not worth the cost of you getting all the ingredients. I would focus on getting the tank stable and adding cheap stony corals and watching how they react in you tank.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

As mentioned above the tank looks pretty new and with dry marco rock which is notorious for absorbing phosphates, you should check your phosphates and nitrates, 0 phosphates will kill a coral. Shoot for 5ppm -10ppm nitrate and 0.05 - 0.1ppm phosphate. LPS tend do well with higher nutrients.

You can wait until your tank is stable before adding stony corals which can take a few months to a year (every tank is different, live rock will speed things up) or you can commit to testing every day and keeping your Alkalinity, nitrate, and phosphate stable.

A KFC dip may help save the coral but probably not worth the cost of you getting all the ingredients. I would focus on getting the tank stable and adding cheap stony corals and watching how they react in you tank.

If my phosphates are 0 and I have a slight layer of algae on my rocks. How do I raise the phospbate without causing more algae?

 

[fushi]

If my phosphates are 0 and I have a slight layer of algae on my rocks. How do I raise the phospbate without causing more algae?

Unfortunately you don‘t, best bet if you want stony corals in a new tank with dry rock is to dose phosphate and nitrate, keep a tang or another good algae eater, and scrub off the rocks every so often to help your tang keep up.

I have found dry rock and sand will suck phosphates out of the water column within hours of dosing which is frustrating so I like to keep trisodium phosphate on a doser to make things easy.

Out of whack nutrients and dry rock/sand are heavily coronated to dinoflagellate outbreaks that will make you wish you had hair algae.

From your tank thread it looks like you may just have a little diatom bloom like a lot of new tanks which is good because diatoms will outcompete dinoflagellates and just disappear in time.

Also if you want to get your tank up to keeping stony corals fast icp testing and trace elements will speed up your progress. Most salts will have enough trace elements but boosting the levels with icp testing will provide noticeable results.

 

[crabgrass]

How fast did it die? Timeframe from entering tanks to falling apart?

 

[SomeHappyFish]

Unfortunately you don‘t, best bet if you want stony corals in a new tank with dry rock is to dose phosphate and nitrate, keep a tang or another good algae eater, and scrub off the rocks every so often to help your tang keep up.

I have found dry rock and sand will suck phosphates out of the water column within hours of dosing which is frustrating so I like to keep trisodium phosphate on a doser to make things easy.

Out of whack nutrients and dry rock/sand are heavily coronated to dinoflagellate outbreaks that will make you wish you had hair algae.

From your tank thread it looks like you may just have a little diatom bloom like a lot of new tanks which is good because diatoms will outcompete dinoflagellates and just disappear in time.

Also if you want to get your tank up to keeping stony corals fast icp testing and trace elements will speed up your progress. Most salts will have enough trace elements but boosting the levels with icp testing will provide noticeable results.

Might add a Lawnmoyer blenny and a bit more trochus. My tank is too small for a tang haha.

I had "stable" phosphate when feeding pellets with an auto feeder but nitrate just kept climbing so I stop that and I would say that 2-4 weeks later phosphate only went down and nitrates also. Nitrate are now stable at 10-15ppm.

Its more of a diatom bloom then anything else but its hard to make it go away. I have coralline algae spawning here and there so I thought a hammer was fine even thought its only been 3 months.

I will be testing my parameters later on and performing a water change after to remove anything bad that might of come from the death of my first hammer.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

How fast did it die? Timeframe from entering tanks to falling apart?

The coral went in Sunday at 5pm ish. 3 days later.


Sunday it opened up a bit.
Monday it looked the same.
Tusday it closed up more
Today. Dead

It did have a bit of a filament kinda like browb jelly. But I thought it was my slight diatom bloom.

 

[crabgrass]

stability is important for these, but this was probably sick from the start if it died that fast.

 

[fushi]

Might add a Lawnmoyer blenny and a bit more trochus. My tank is too small for a tang haha.

I had "stable" phosphate when feeding pellets with an auto feeder but nitrate just kept climbing so I stop that and I would say that 2-4 weeks later phosphate only went down and nitrates also. Nitrate are now stable at 10-15ppm.

Its more of a diatom bloom then anything else but its hard to make it go away. I have coralline algae spawning here and there so I thought a hammer was fine even thought its only been 3 months.

I will be testing my parameters later on and performing a water change after to remove anything bad that might of come from the death of my first hammer.

I love my blenny‘s, they punch above their weight. Caribbean nerite snails are great too.

I wouldn’t worry about the diatoms, if anything learn to love them as they help keep the dinos away. Diatoms tend to bloom with high silicates, and TDS meters on RODI systems don’t catch silicates.

I think since its a smaller system, water changes to keep the nitrates down and phosphate dosing is an easy route.

You can also try an iodine dip for 5 minutes on the torch to see if you can save it.

tank water + a little betadine until dip is a light tea color for 5 minutes may help (don’t exceed 10 minutes)

 

[Denimchicken]

stability is important for these, but this was probably sick from the start if it died that fast.

That is what I think too. Unless the salinity or ammonia are way in the red. Or PH for that matter. Start with some more forgiving softies and wait for lps/sps. You are only going kill them and be a little bit poorer. This hobby is a money pit and worse for the impatient.

 

[crabgrass]

That is what I think too. Unless the salinity or ammonia are way in the red. Or PH for that matter. Start with some more forgiving softies and wait for lps/sps. You are only going kill them and be a little bit poorer. This hobby is a money pit and worse for the impatient.

Yep. I had 2 hammers in a 20g that had some major stability issues. They were not treated the best, and you knew when they were unhappy if parameters swung. But didn’t croak immediately either. Moving them to a larger tank with stable parameters helped a bunch. If I could have kept the 20g more stable, I am sure they would have been fine

 

[SomeHappyFish]

I love my blenny‘s, they punch above their weight. Caribbean nerite snails are great too.

I wouldn’t worry about the diatoms, if anything learn to love them as they help keep the dinos away. Diatoms tend to bloom with high silicates, and TDS meters on RODI systems don’t catch silicates.

I think since its a smaller system, water changes to keep the nitrates down and phosphate dosing is an easy route.

You can also try an iodine dip for 5 minutes on the torch to see if you can save it.

tank water + a little betadine until dip is a light tea color for 5 minutes may help (don’t exceed 10 minutes)

I think my LFS has Caribbean Nerith Il'l ask. I have to do a bit of research first if my Midas is going to be an issue with a lawnmoyer.

Hooo I was wondering about the TDS and silicate. My Filter might be due... It has a slight yellow tint but nothing bad.

Il'l look into phosphate dosing if my phosphate keep being 0.

I pulled it out, its dead. Il'l wait 2 more months.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

That is what I think too. Unless the salinity or ammonia are way in the red. Or PH for that matter. Start with some more forgiving softies and wait for lps/sps. You are only going kill them and be a little bit poorer. This hobby is a money pit and worse for the impatient.

Salinity stayed withing range.
ammonia, ph stayed the same. Il'l wait a bit longer for other LPS. My acan and gorgo seems to be doing fine however.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

Yep. I had 2 hammers in a 20g that had some major stability issues. They were not treated the best, and you knew when they were unhappy if parameters swung. But didn’t croak immediately either. Moving them to a larger tank with stable parameters helped a bunch. If I could have kept the 20g more stable, I am sure they would have been fine

My guess is that it became stresses then became quickly sick and died.

 

[fushi]

I think my LFS has Caribbean Nerith Il'l ask. I have to do a bit of research first if my Midas is going to be an issue with a lawnmoyer.

Hooo I was wondering about the TDS and silicate. My Filter might be due... It has a slight yellow tint but nothing bad.

Il'l look into phosphate dosing if my phosphate keep being 0.

I pulled it out, its dead. Il'l wait 2 more months.

The nerites eat way more algae than my trochus do, but they tend to leave little eggs on the glass but it scrapes off easily.

Yeah I didn’t realize how high my silicates were until I got an icp test of my RODI water, as the tds meter doesn’t pick it up. It’s a pretty easy fix to just add a “silicate buster” cartridge to the last stage of the RODI system if yours are high too.

Randys trisodium phosphate diy recipe works great and doesn’t raise potassium like some of the brand name phosphate additives.

Sorry to hear it didn’t make It, but unfortunately its part of the hobby.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

The nerites eat way more algae than my trochus do, but they tend to leave little eggs on the glass but it scrapes off easily.

Yeah I didn’t realize how high my silicates were until I got an icp test of my RODI water, as the tds meter doesn’t pick it up. It’s a pretty easy fix to just add a “silicate buster” cartridge to the last stage of the RODI system if yours are high too.

Randys trisodium phosphate diy recipe works great and doesn’t raise potassium like some of the brand name phosphate additives.

Sorry to hear it didn’t make It, but unfortunately its part of the hobby.

Il'l do a silicate test and see how much I get and then if I have elevated levels add a silicate buster.

Thanks Il'l look into it !

Yeah its 30$ mistake which might save more $$$ down the line and corals.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Yesterday





This afternoon

Temp acclimated.
Dip in revive 5min.
Low flow, medium light. 150par


Acan, zoa, kenya, Gorgo all seem to be doing fine !

This is recession due to stress.
Hammers are intolerant to major swings in water quality, and sensitive to almost any level of copper in the water especially if any tap water was added. Calcium and alk are important parameters that will affect their growth and this coral will start to die off if calcium levels are too low which should be about 400 ppm.
Basically, avoid bright light and water flow and dark lighting. Bright lights cause bleaching and low lighting will cause them to shrink and starve. Maintain moderate light for their photosynthesis and keep it off the sand bed which sand can irritate it.
I suspect your Po4 and Nitrates are elevated and may be causing this - something to check