How to help my hammer heal

[hllb]

My hammer has lost color recently - I suspect due to peroxide treatments for GHA. It used to expand much more and had some deeper colors. What can I do to help it heal?

 

[Flippers4pups]

First and foremost reduce your light intensity. Place it in a shaded area.

What's your water parameters?

 

[hllb]

I’ll do full testing tomorrow with water change but last weekend:
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 8
Ph: 8.3
Ca: 450
Nitrates: 13
Phosphates: .074
Mag: 1335

my nitrates were higher when this started - at least 25, and have been coming down.

I can move it to a more shaded area too. My lights are already down and have been for a while. the hammer is on the sand bed. I have nanobox reef lights and the white/mint is around 45 and the blues are 70. The photoperiod is 9.5 hrs with the white/mint on for 4.5 hrs

 

[hllb]

Moved it to a more shaded area and I think it opened up a bit better yesterday. Took a pic this morning of it closed up. When I moved it I noticed some algae on the skeleton. Not an expert but I don’t think this looks very good. I don’t remember the dark on the skeleton before but I’ll go back and look at pictures.

 

[hllb]

Here it is after the lights came on. Anything else I can do for it? And here are yesterday’s water parms:

salinity: 1.026
Alkalinity: 8.3
Ph: 8.2
Ca: 430
Po4: .074
Nitrates: 12
Temp: 78.3

I didn’t test mg.

 

[chris k.]

Your parameters are close to mine and my hammers are doing fine. However i almost lost a hammer a while back due to a gha outbreak. I would suspect the peroxide is probably the reason for discoloration.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Here it is after the lights came on. Anything else I can do for it? And here are yesterday’s water parms:

salinity: 1.026
Alkalinity: 8.3
Ph: 8.2
Ca: 430
Po4: .074
Nitrates: 12
Temp: 78.3

I didn’t test mg.

All you can do now is wait and see.
Numbers look good.

 

[Mical]

Give it time. Let it get used to lower light and recover.

 

[hllb]

Thanks guys. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else I should be doing.

 

[Mical]

Thanks guys. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else I should be doing.

You're doing everything reasonable to help it recover. It took weeks to show stress, it'll take weeks for it to let you know it's well.

 

[Webslinger]

Euphyllia’s are quite hardy. Leave it alone and parameters steady and it should be fine.

 

[hllb]

I just noticed the GHA is spreading again. Yippee...reef flux didn’t work, Peroxide worked but caused issues...dosing with Vibrant now. Sigh...

 

[Webslinger]

Get a fresh water black molly They are gha eating beasts

 

[hllb]

Get a fresh water black molly and stop dosing

I’ve had many critters that should eat GHA and none would touch it. Though never a fish as tangs are too big for my tank. Molly’s eat that much algae?

 

[Webslinger]

They eat gha faster than it can grow. There are no quick fixes in this hobby. A refugium with chaeto will out compete the gha in the display.

 

[hllb]

They eat gha faster than it can grow. There are no quick fixes in this hobby. A refugium with chaeto will out compete the gha in the display.

I actually bought the stuff for a fuge and haven’t set it up yet. I think the vibrant would kill it. I wanted to get aggressive with the GHA because it was starting to choke out my corals. I had tried beating it slowly before I tried drastic measures.

 

[hllb]

Bumping this back up. It's been about 5 weeks and my hammer hasn't really changed. I don't see any improvements. Anything else I can do?

 

[Webslinger]

looks ok to me, move it away from other corals

 

[hllb]

looks ok to me, move it away from other corals

It’s really pale and translucent and about 1/3 to 1/2 the size it used to be. I know it’s hard to tell from the picture.

 

[Webslinger]

get it out of the sand, they like flow from underneath