Hammer

WaheedNaidoo · Nov 6, 2019

Need some help please, my hammer hasn’t been doing well, it’s previously was on my rock but 1 head died and 1 is in the process of dying, the other 2 do okay, it’s been in my tank for a month and a half, a week ago i had my first hammer which has been in my tank from the very beginning killed by brown jelly, can I frag this hammer? And discard the head that is dead? I’ve never had issues with hammers before, I am not quite sure if it’s not getting enough light while it was on the rock, I changed to the AI Prime about 3 weeks ago, everything else in my tank is doing good.

I’ve moved the hammer to sand bed hoping that the spread of light on all the heads will be greater.

ScottB · Nov 6, 2019

Yes, you can use a bandsaw to cut off the dead heads although I would wait until you see some recovery on the existing head(s). A bone cutter MIGHT work, but you risk splitting the the head vertically. I have been there; it is over.

In the meantime, I would suggest a dip in Lugols for the piece that had brown jelly.

WaheedNaidoo · Nov 6, 2019

Thanks for the reply, I am just not 100% sure where to cut, they all seem to part of 1 skeleton and I scared that if I cut it between the heads I will damage the tissue and cause infection. I’ve dipped the coral twice in the space of the week, I’ve moved it today to see if it improves on the sandbed.

regarding the hammer that had brown jelly, I noticed it and immediately got rid of it, here are some pics

Bayareareefer18 · Nov 6, 2019

What are your water params

WaheedNaidoo · Nov 6, 2019

nitrates at 10ppm and phosphates at 0.02, cal at 430 and mag at 1310, ammonia 0 and nitrites are 0, dkh 8.6 and ph 7.8

Mastiffsrule · Nov 6, 2019

Eventually, sorry about the troubles.

Quick question, are we sure it is brown jelly. I can’t tell from the pix.

You can frag the piece as mentioned, but I may hold off on that. If we’re sure it is brown jelly than action should be taken. If not we may not want to stress it out. Fragging a wall hammer would need a band saw as Bay Area mentioned. There are some vids on it.

Any chance new coral has been put in recently? Moving it to the bottom sounds good, keep a light to medium flow on it.

@Flippers4pups is great with hammers. Maybe he will stop by.

WaheedNaidoo · Nov 7, 2019

I don’t think the hammer in my original post has brown jelly but it’s not happy if I’ve lost 2 heads from it, that’s what’s making me stress don’t want to lose the whole piece, yes a few new pieces of coral were added to my tank. I was previously using Red Sea Coral Pro however I found the alk levels to be very high, it shot up to 13 which caused all my corals to stress for a few days, I made the switch to aqua forest reef salt and now my alk is 8.6 and everything seems to be happy besides the hammer