Polyp bailout on my Euphyllia sp. golden hammer.... what to do?

[elysics]

I know it doesn't look 100% like polyp bailout, but still some of the polyps came lose, and the hammer looks really stressed. This morning again I noticed the mouth of the hammer showing clearly, like the polyps around it move a little bit away. After about an hour, everything is back to 'normal' and the mouth is tucked under the surrounding polyps.
Is this a normal reaction?

The only fish and inverts that are in the tank are:
2 ocellaris clownfish
1 royal gramma
1 tail spot blenny
1 cleaner shrimp
A dozen tectus snails
6 nassarius vibex (they stay mostly in the sand)

I feed more then enough so none of them should start nipping on the corals
None of them look like potential coral-eaters to me

To be clear, a "polyp" of a hammer is the entire head. There are no polyps around the mouth, the mouth is the polyp. What you are thinking of are just some tentacles.

Sometimes they throw off tentacle tips like missiles to kill other corals

Still think it is the zero phosphate annoying it

 

[elysics]

and regarding carbon dosing, which I am a fan of too, you still shouldn't ignore the zero. You are not dosing or measuring 24/7, only once a day, so it may well bottom out completely to the bitter end.

There's a difference between undetectable because your test kit isn't precise enough for what little there is, and actual 0. Both will show as "0" on tests.

Keep slowly upping the phosphate dose until it no longer shows 0 in the morning. Or reduce the carbon dose for now until the same happens. Or both at the same time little by little.

It's not a matter of needing to stop what you are doing, just doing a bit more tuning on how much you dose

 

[attiland]

I was in the belief that the increase in alk in steps of '0.25' is subtle enough for the corals to bear....
I hear people saying you can adjust your alk in steps 1 dKH max a day...

Maybe it's the nitrate and phosphate dosing that is to drastic, but even that is hard to believe because al other coral look perfectly happy to me.

I'll test my parameters again this evening to see what's going on.
If the numbers start to match it's maybe time to slow down on the dosings....

I only said it as my Duncan has retracted immediately when I done more than 0.1 my hammer done better. The visible retraction stopped once I have started to use doser to do the job throughout the day and the overall increase wasn’t more than 0.1-0.2.
my experience is corals don’t like big change good or bad.

 

[Reefscape20g]

To be clear, a "polyp" of a hammer is the entire head. There are no polyps around the mouth, the mouth is the polyp. What you are thinking of are just some tentacles.

Sometimes they throw off tentacle tips like missiles to kill other corals

Still think it is the zero phosphate annoying it

Thanks for the clarification!!

 

[Reefscape20g]

I only said it as my Duncan has retracted immediately when I done more than 0.1 my hammer done better. The visible retraction stopped once I have started to use doser to do the job throughout the day and the overall increase wasn’t more than 0.1-0.2.
my experience is corals don’t like big change good or bad.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Since I’m dosing my additives manually it’s not really possible to divide the dosages in smaller parts throughout the day…
A doser would solve this but isn’t really an option at the moment

 

[Reefscape20g]

Small update on my water parameters of yesterday 04/08:
Alk: 7.2 dKH
Nitrate: 2 ppm
Phosphate: 0.02 ppm

I paused the carbon dosing untill the numbers start to match up and are stable.
After that I'll restart the carbon dosing at 1/4 of the recommended dosage.

 

[Reefscape20g]

Update:
Strange things are happening with this hammer coral.
Today I noticed the shape of the hammer tentacles is changing.
The typical 'T' shape is mostly gone on the larger tentacles...

Anyone noticed this before? What could be the reason?