Hammers Melting

[Chrisz]

Was dosing silicates and not doing water changes trying to get rid of dino’s.

My nitrate and phosphate was going through the roof so I stopped dosing and went back to doing water changes last weekend. This week after my water change I noticed my hammers loosing heads. Never had this happen before, am I lowering nitrate and phosphate too fast?

Two weeks ago:
Phosphate:1.34
Nitrate 61.6

Last week after water change 20%
Phosphate: 1.0
Nitrate 45.7

This week after water change 20%
Phosphate: .83
Nitrate: 38.2

Other values this week prior to the water change 20%

DKH 6.3
Calcium 399
Mag 1490
PH 7.6

Samples where taken in the am just before lights on

I started putting kalkwasser in my ATO a month ago or so 3 gallons to 2 teaspoons, it hasn’t done much for PH or DKH that is always low. Getting a calcium reading of 399 is untypically low and I will need to retest.

I’ve never had issues with doing water changes, it usually corrects everything, what the heck is going on?

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Bumping your post!

 

[kevgib67]

@ISpeakForTheSeas ?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

@ISpeakForTheSeas ?

Well, I'm not a coral expert, but I'm happy to try and help figure this out if we can (a quick search showed a lot of similar issues that went unsolved, so no guarantees).

To start, have there been any other changes in or around the tank?

How are the other tank inhabitants doing? Any problems with any of them?

How stable were the other parameters (not Nitrate and Phosphate) before the water changes?

Is predation/over-loving a possibility? (I've heard of cases where hammers randomly start doing poorly after months only to find out that some of the fish have suddenly taken a liking to the hammer and started harassing it.)

With that out of the way, I've heard of some hammers doing poorly with sudden changes to the water quality/sudden possible exposure to harmful bacteria (such as with the rearranging of rockwork and sand in a tank); I've also heard of hammer corals just suddenly having heads that die off for no apparent reason - in some cases, the colony will reportedly stop dying if you cull the dying heads (i.e. if you cut the dying heads off the colony, in some cases it will stop the rest of the heads from dying too). These last cases are speculated to be bacteria-related, but there's no definitive evidence of that.

I've also heard some speculation that 1 ) hammer corals will show issues a few weeks after the problems actually occur (so the issue may have started weeks ago and you're just now seeing the results of that issue) and 2 ) that low Alk with high nutrients may cause problems with corals (I have not been able to confirm this, and I haven't looked into deeply yet, but it's some speculation I've come across); so these may be things to consider as well.

 

[Big E]

I've had this happen to random heads where they shrink and then never open fully open to eventually slowly die.

Best thing to do is cut the bad head out asap because well before the head breaks down it affects the others around it and can spread. You can experiment dipping the bad head.

 

[Dom]

A picture of what your hammers are looking like would be helpful.

And alk reading of 6.3 is low. I shoot for 8-8.5 in my tanks. You may be dealing with RTN, but without pics, its tough to be certain.