Hammer Help

[TiberianSun]

Looking for some advice. We recently bought another hammer coral to replace one that died. Total length is about 7 inches.

Each one we have had in the past has died due to brown algae. Water parameters are good, coral is placed in a medium flow area and is at the bottom of the tank. It's isolated so it's not getting stung. This hammer is showing signs of brown algae in the middle.

How difficult is it to cut a hammer coral? I'm thinking of cutting off the good parts before the algae can spread.

 

[Eckolancer]

Pretty easy I've cut one once in the middle of the mouth and it survived although I don't recommend doing it that way.


Sent from pay phone in the airport.

 

[jccaclimber]

Important question here, are you talking wall hammer or branch hammer? Branch is pretty easy, walls can be iffy. How much do you feed?

 

[Eckolancer]

@jccaclimber wrote:

Oh yeah I forgot about the walls they are kinda iffy to frag.


Sent from pay phone in the airport.

 

[hoopsdaddy]

Can you post an image of what the coral looks like? Does it look something like this?
http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/uploads/monthly_01_2013/post-13947-0-06819100-1357780474_thumb.jpg

if so, you might be fighting brown jelly disease and not algae, which brown jelly often looks like. Do a little research. If your tank isn't covered in algae and your parameters are in pretty good shape and you have it under medium flow I would lean toward disease. Just my 2c.

 

[TiberianSun]

Sorry for the delayed repsonse. It's a wall hammer and we believe the issue is brown jelly (said algae before by mistake).

We try and spot feed weekly but that doesn't always happen.

 

[hoopsdaddy]

Are you doing any type of dip or treatment of the coral at this point?

 

[TiberianSun]

At this point it appears to be doing okay so I'm going to hold off on cutting out the dead portion. Ironically on the other side of the tank we had a torch that went from awesome to dead in 24 hrs but all the others are fine. This is such a frustrating hobby!!!