Hammer Coral Looks Bad!

[bigpete]

so I bought a healthy piece of hammer coral a few weeks ago. Its in my nano 12 gal with 48 watts of light placed middle/top. It has been open and healthy up until 2 days ago when i noticed only one of the 4 heads is fully opened. it does not host my clown, all my water parameters are where the should be and the salinity is at 1.025. can anyone tell me whats happening?

 

[sac10918]

Do you feed it? How much flow is it getting where it is at?

 

[bigpete]

i feed the tank phyto every now and then. it has even water flow. its in the middle to top area

 

[gtiguy]

I have noticed when i got my 13 head hammer that it didnt like flow at all, minor flow if that...try putting it somewhere else in the tank and see what happens, ...to be honest i have mine standing up in the back of my tank where there isnt the most direct light and minor flow and its huge!!!

 

[sac10918]

I had a frogspawn that wasnt doing very good...It was suggested to me by another reefer to buy Marine Snow and feed that. Since then, the frogspawn came back to life. It looks a trillion times better. If you do not think it is a lighting or flow problem and your tank levels are good, I would see if you can get some marine snow and feed it to your hammer.

 

[lbaskball]

BigPete why didnt you come to me and ask me this question?haha you know I have hammer corals!
Make sure you got low/moderate flow. In my tank, they have good flow so that there branches wave in the water but not direct flow. If its high flow, their branches get small, if its low flow their branches gets long.
I think what your having is a water quality problem. I always noticed with mine when the water quality gets low they start to shrink. OR
Have you added any chemicals directly into your tank or try to adjust the ph in some way? That also makes them not open up for a while.
Here is the specs that I keep my hammer corals..
ph 8.2
salinity 1.023-1.024
low/moderate flow
lighting: gets direct light of my 36watt PC light and it also gets metal halide lighting a little bit.
placement:Center, middle of the tank next to my frogspawn
feeding: I feed it phytplankton cube every week.
Keep your water quality good, ph and salinity balanced! Hope this helps. The seem pretty easy to keep, DId you make sure that when you bought it, it wasnt damaged..or that none of your fish or crabs have been picking on it?