help with hammer coral?

[squishifishi]

I am new to hammer corals
I added one to my pico on saturday, and I havea few questions.
1. it's not opening all the way. is it still adjusting, or is there a problem?
2. is low flow ok?
3. the mouth looks wierd. its not a pursed slit like I would expect.... just a hole? is that normal or bad and what does it mean?
4. feeding...how often should I feed it? is mysis ok? i put a piece in it's mouth today and it just sorta drifted away. would it be better to place the food in the tentcles?
sorry for so many questions! thank you!!!

[mess7777]

What are your parameters. I wide open mouth can be a sign of distress, especially if it's spewing out brown strings. Low flow is ok, so long as there is enough to keep it waving around.

Some people never feed theirs, I try but it is usually stolen by fish(clowns) before they have a chance to eat the food.

Good luck. My personal experience is that frogspawns are sensitive to high nitrates and phosphates...and any foreign chemicals, even 'reef safe' tend to impact them more than others in my tank.

[mfinn]

A hammer in a 2.5 gallon tank?
I wouldn't bother feeding it. I haven't seen any feeding response with any of mine.
Not sure if you plan to have any other corals in this tank, but the hammer might have something to say about that. They like to reach out and sting neighbors and I've seen sweeper tentacles with mine go 4-5 inches in all directions.

A picture would help

[squishifishi]

It is a very small frag. So, I moved it to a higher flowarea and it looks a little bit better. the mouth is still wierd, and it seems floppy rather than fluffy, but I hope it will do ok. It now has a 'gentle breeze' on it, but it is also danerously close to the galaxea.... I sure hope they don't wage a turf war.( i had them 7 inches apart before)
All flow comes from a little air powered filter so there isn't much flow and I have little control over it. I'm sure everything would appre iate some stronger flow. I'm looking into an external cascade filter or something. I think that would be a HUGE improvement and add volume.
How can I tell if it's not getting enough light? I know with softies they stretch to get more light, but how do I tell with a hammer coral? thanks!

[mfinn]

How much light do you have?

[squishifishi]

that's the thing...I'm not sure! it's a 10 watt led made up of red green and blue bulbs so that you can change the color. It has a diffuser cover so I can't see how it is actually biult, and I don't know which of those colors are usable for coral.
Can you tell from the coral itself if it has enough light?
Also, i saw that corals can gape when splitting. this head does have 2 mouths, so could this be the ause of it's pit-like mouth?
I ran some tests today here are the params-
ph:8.1
ammonia:0.50
nitrite:0
nitrate: 3
my new marine guppy mysteriously dissapeared this morning without a trace, so I'm assuming it died and all the remains were devoured by the cuc. this is the cause of the ammonia. it is a new thing and is therefore seperate and unrelated to my sad little coral
thanks!

[squishifishi]

also, I wouldn't say the mouth is "wide open"...
it just kind of slopes down into a small hole instead of peaking up to the mouth like you'd usually see.
some more advice please?

[Fish_Kid99]

a pic would really help...

[squishifishi]

I'll try, but the computer hates the camera, and the camera hates the tank.
Until I get a picture, does anyone know how to tell if the coral is getting enough light???

[SushiGirl]

It should be open and extended all the way, and not limp. Other than that without a pic, can't really help...not knowing things like what colors it's supposed to be and whether it is holding those colors in your tank, etc.

[squishifishi]

so if it's limp it probably isn'tbgetting enough light? the colours haven't changed much, but it does look very floppy. I assumed it would do ok because my galaxea is doing fantastic and growing fast. I thought they had similar lighting needs.

[SushiGirl]

What kind of flow is it getting? It should be waving a little in the current. If this is the tiny tank, how far apart are they? The galaxea will get very long stinging tentacles. I have my galaxea where the flow blows the tentacles away from my trumpet coral. It does sting a mushroom that chose the wrong place to plant itself. It's taken months, but the mushroom is losing.

[squishifishi]

never seen sweepers on it. I just got a new filter today so it will get much more flow also, because of the rebound of the current off the wall, the hammer and galaxea's tentacles are blowing opposite away from eachother. that should make itnimpossible to sting eachother when the sweepers do come out eventually.

[squishifishi]

now it's not really opening up much at all! the tips still glow bright green under by bluelight though, that means it's still alive...right?

[squishifishi]

today some of the tentacles are inflated abd not flat/droopy! yay!
still not seeing much extension/opening, but I reallyhope this beautiful coral will pull through.

[squishifishi]

It died today. It didn't open up art all today, and when I got home from work, there was this brown film over the top of it. I figured it was some sort of algae, but apparently the whole thing had just dissinegrated because when I went to blow the guck off, the whole coral went flying apart in a whirl of brown goo. And is smelled awful! The tips were still green, but it's whole core and everything was melted away and gross so I tossed it
I guess now I have more space to add new corals without dealing with agression...
sigh...

[greg1786]

Sorry to hear about the loss. How old is the tank? I ask because you said you had ammonia and thats prob what killed your guppy? I may have read that incorrectly but if there is ammonia present, especially enough to kill a fish, sensitive things like inverts and corals are certain to meet an untimely demise.

[squishifishi]

oh, I don't know about ammonia right now, that was a little while ago. It's been set up for almost 5months now, so that means I had the coral for just over a month. My galaxea and softies are all doing great and growing too. Any ideas what could have been the cause of death? does it sound at all like "brown slime"? how couldI preventthis in the future? thank you!!