hammer receding

[yogisfriend]

I have an anchor hammer that began losing heads from one corner about a week ago and is continuing to do so. All my parameters are dead on. I do 10% water changes every Friday in my 120 and I test for phosphate, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, ph, alk, mg, and calcium on Saturday. I have 12 x 54 T-5 lighting.

I have one phosban reactor with rowaphos and one running carbon. I also have a ASM G-2 skimmer in the sump. I feed every other day--a mix of blended seafood mix, garlic extreme, mysis, formula 1 and formula 2.

I have a yellow tang and mated tomato clowns. I have never seen any of them close to the hammer. It was postioned close to a branching leather when the probem started, but the part receding was the farthest away.

I haven't seen any brown slime coming out of it, but there was some clear slime for about a day. I rinsed it off and the slime went away.

When the problem began the hammer was at the top of the tank with fairly low flow. Since I noticed the problem I have moved it to the middle, and finally to the bottom of the tank. I have the hydro heads on my flow and have tried the hammer in different spots where it gets hit directly or gets indirect flow during the hydro's revolution. Nothing seems to help.

I have read everything I could find about hammers, but can't find anything about this issue except sometimes it just happens. Any ideas?

[frederickk]

They usually like very low flow and moderate light. Mine are at the bottom and near the bottom where my flow is pretty much par to zero.

[yogisfriend]

Thanks. I'll put it back on the bottom.

[IslandCrow]

That sounds a lot like what happened to my hammer, which is recovering quite nicely. I did a combination of things, so I'm not 100% sure what did it, but here's what I did and my guesses.

I isolated the coral (it's just a small frag) and put it in a hang-in container up towards the top of my tank. It was about midway down the tank previously. Here's what I can think of that's different.

- it's getting significantly less water flow. The tentacles are almost stationary with very slight waving motion. Before, they were in light-moderate flow.

- It's about 8" closer to the lights (about 6" below the water and 11" from the light). Of course, it sounds like you have significantly more light than I do (4xT-5 in my 55g)

- If there were any fish or crabs bothering it before, for the most part, they can't now. My six-line still finds his way in there and likes to swim around the hammer. My snails also find their way in from time to time.

- It's well away from any other corals that could theoretically be in competition with it. The only one I had within a foot of it before was a candy cane frag about 5-6" away.

So, I'm not sure how much help that is. Good luck to you. These guys are supposed to be pretty easy to keep, but I've managed to kill one and just barely save this one.