Thriving or just Surviving? Hammer Question

[SeaOnTheRocks]

I’m curious to know if my hologram hammer (added about a month ago) is happy and trying to split or if it’s about to die off?
Picture attached is when I walked by during lights off and shown a light into the tank to see it have a translucent film over the area where it’s oral disc happened to be.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

IMO night time pictures do not reflect the health of a coral, would need a daytime pic.

With that said, I cannot see the 'film' in this picture, but hammers sometimes grow a bubble where the polyps are splitting, so perhaps that is what you see.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Parameters of your tank?
And I agree, we would need to see a picture of how it is doing during the day with the lights on, to really see how it is doing

 

[SeaOnTheRocks]

IMO night time pictures do not reflect the health of a coral, would need a daytime pic.

With that said, I cannot see the 'film' in this picture, but hammers sometimes grow a bubble where the polyps are splitting, so perhaps that is what you see.

Parameters of your tank?
And I agree, we would need to see a picture of how it is doing during the day with the lights on, to really see how it is doing

I’ll try to attach a picture of it during the day. Parameters were checked Monday and everything was WNL
kH: 9
pH: 8.5
NO2: 0
NO3: 5 mg/l
NH4/NH3: 0
Po4: 0.25-0.5
Ca: 400-420

Salinity: 1.025

 

[zuri]

I’m curious to know if my hologram hammer (added about a month ago) is happy and trying to split or if it’s about to die off?
Picture attached is when I walked by during lights off and shown a light into the tank to see it have a translucent film over the area where it’s oral disc happened to be.

a month? from the looks of it yea its healthy at night you can tell by the brown color of its skin aswell as how far it goes down the skeleton. if it was showing white and up higher that would be bad, at night it really shows up well. you can tell alot about how well a coral is doing at night once you know what too look for in each coral

 

[KrisReef]

It’s dying from too much attention.

A watched coral never grows.

The best way to see coral grow is to take a nice two week vacation to Rarotonga, or Tahiti and snorkel all day and eat ahi poke from the roadside restaurants each night.

Sea-ing coral growing on a reef or in the lagoon will help you appreciate that nature is both beautiful and messy. Reefs have all kinds of life including algae, coral, seafans sea pens, crabs trigger fish and parrot fish, butterfly fish and lots of mouths that nibble at the algae, worms and sacred coral polyps but the reef just keeps on growing.

When you get back home you will look at the coral and you will see all the growth that happened because you weren't watching it all day so that it appeared that nothing was happening.

It might take a few vacations to convince yourself of this truth, but even when you know most people have to look at their tanks everyday. If they would just look every two weeks they might see That I’m right.

A camera can create a memory that can be compared to see this. Take another picture in two weeks. If the coral isn’t growing, relax eventually if you have stable parameters and drift feed that hammer will be baseball sized 2/2/2026.

Patience to watch paint dry. Is needed.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Are you using API tests? API is not very accurate, I find it works for nitrate, but not very well for the others, especially the phosphate test. Just throw that API phosphate test away, its completely wrong.

Corals take several weeks, sometimes months to acclimate to a tank, I've had certain corals take years to acclimate. IME the more expensive they are, they slower they acclimate and the slower they grow.

Personally I would focus on upgrading the test kits and maintaining excellent water quality.

 

[SeaOnTheRocks]

Are you using API tests? API is not very accurate, I find it works for nitrate, but not very well for the others, especially the phosphate test. Just throw that API phosphate test away, its completely wrong.

Corals take several weeks, sometimes months to acclimate to a tank, I've had certain corals take years to acclimate. IME the more expensive they are, they slower they acclimate and the slower they grow.

Personally I would focus on upgrading the test kits and maintaining excellent water quality.

I’m still pretty new to the hobby. I do not use API test kit. I do weekly testing with the Sera Marin Aqua-Test Box Master Test Kit as well as the Salifert Magnesium test kit.

 

[SeaOnTheRocks]

IMO night time pictures do not reflect the health of a coral, would need a daytime pic.

With that said, I cannot see the 'film' in this picture, but hammers sometimes grow a bubble where the polyps are splitting, so perhaps that is what you see.

To update, I’m pretty sure it was preparing for a split. The head in question was one branch and now turning into two

 

[BryanM]

It certainly looks like its split, and had been splitting for a bit. looks healthy to me.

 

[SeaOnTheRocks]

It certainly looks like its split, and had been splitting for a bit. looks healthy to me.

Thanks for your help! This is my first hammer and while, yes, I may have been watching too closely as mentioned before. However, it was my first hammer since starting the tank & hobby. Even though i tried to look for information on the deep web and there wasn’t much