New hammer

xert4l

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Hello, I'm new to reef aquarium. I got a new hammer and dipped it two days ago, then I noticed them spewing white mucus. Yesterday I manually removed the mucus from 2 mouths with a pipette out of curiosity because it was kinda just swaying loosely in the wave and the polyps look fine to me. Because I think they are fine, this morning removed mucus from the other mouths but there are no polyps that I can see like in this pic. Is it dead? What should I do?

17842717660735299898252662447450.jpg
 
Where did you get the hammer from?

How did it look when you bought it?

How did you acclimate it?

How did you dip it?

How is everything else in your tank doing?
 
I've seen hammers come back from looking completely dead so don't lose hope yet.

Hammers have sharp skeletons as you can see, so when transporting/bagging/acclimating it is crucial to be very gentle so it dosen't cut itself on its own skeleton.

Keep it in the sand like you have it. Make sure it has a nice calm flow moving around it. Keep your fingers crossed.
 
Where did you get the hammer from?

How did it look when you bought it?

How did you acclimate it?

How did you dip it?

How is everything else in your tank doing?
Got it from a local seller. Pic is how it looked like when it arrived.

Temp acclimated it for about 20 minutes then drip acclimated for 30 minutes.

I dipped it with 3 drops of povidone-iodine 10% in 1 liter of tank water and gentle stirring, after only 2 minutes I rinsed it and placed it on the sandbed.

I currently have discosoma, sinularia and GSP and all are looking fine I guess they all opened up nicely.

2 of the 6 heads are looking nicely right now, the other 4 is like on my first pic/thread.



IMG-20260715-WA0022.jpg
 
Its easier to see pictures here when you turn off the blue lights and leave only the white lights. But this hammer looks 90% dead.

I would suggest to post a full tank picture, also list your parameters, type of lighting and what do you have for flow in tank. More information will help us to help you figure out what went wrong. A hammer coral is not exactly a beginner level coral, but if the hammer died in just 2 days, then need to figure this out before you buy more corals...
 
I've seen hammers come back from looking completely dead so don't lose hope yet.

Hammers have sharp skeletons as you can see, so when transporting/bagging/acclimating it is crucial to be very gentle so it dosen't cut itself on its own skeleton.

Keep it in the sand like you have it. Make sure it has a nice calm flow moving around it. Keep your fingers crossed.
But they didn't arrive like that, they even started to extend their polyps while I was acclimating them. I guess it was the dip maybe it was too harsh for them? Well I can only hope for the best now. Thank you!
 
Its easier to see pictures here when you turn off the blue lights and leave only the white lights. But this hammer looks 90% dead.

I would suggest to post a full tank picture, also list your parameters, type of lighting and what do you have for flow in tank. More information will help us to help you figure out what went wrong. A hammer coral is not exactly a beginner level coral, but if the hammer died in just 2 days, then need to figure this out before you buy more corals...
Sorry in advance for every reefers here.

This is a 15 liters (~4 us gallons) in water volume of a tank. Lighting is 12 watts of diy hpl led lights 3 watts each. Flow is from a HOB filter with a flow rate of 350 liters/h. I have this tank for 4 months now and I currently have a green discosoma, sinularia, and gsp, they all look healthy to me at least, polyps are extending nicely. A test kit that is affordable to me is a freshwater test strips that I can buy for each strip and the parameters that is relevant is just nitrate getting a reading of ~10ppm.

I cheaped out on almost everything, I'm a high schooler from a poorer side of Indonesia. So getting a good test kit is just not possible.
 

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