Urgent help needed : Branching Hammer

[ChilisREasy]

Can someone please help me or at least tell me whats causing this, i have a colony of over 35 heads of hammer in my large tank, ive had it for over 2 years, its been doing great, but it started going down hill last month, its shrinking more & more every day, ive lost 3 heads & 6 more are almost down to nothing, i fragged 2 heads & placed them in my other tank under MH lights, they did good for a while, now there shrinking as well ! ..can someone tell me whats going on ? i have no flatworms, no fire worms, no nudibranches, no bristleworms, cyano is not growing on the skeleton branches, but there has been some sponges growing, Calcium is 400 - 420

Lighting on large tank is 120w 10k PC (coral near the top)
New Tank 150w 10k MH (coral at water surface directly under bulb)

all other water parms are normal.

[fish.freak]

are you feeding them?
have you moved the flow?
Dont keep them too close to the top with the MH.

[ChilisREasy]

yea i feed them plankton,Shrimp & Cyclop-eeze. there not getting much flow, same flow ever since i had them. i thought it was the giant colt leather i added to the large tank, but its not touching it & the other hammers in the new tank are shrinking as well with no big leathers in there. ill move the ones under the MH

[ChilisREasy]

anyone ?

[Hop]

Did you change anything else within the last two months? I've read that often times subtle changes often take 2-5 months to be seen in some corals. Just an idea, tapping deep into my mental roledex

[Loverotties]

What are your other water perimeters?

[wyliecoyote]

the colt isn't touching but it is releasing toxins. soft corals are into chemical warfare. are you slimming? using carbon? doing weekly water changes? if you have a large softie in the tank with lps or sps you need to be doing those things. also sounds like you may be feeding a little heavily. another possibility is that your alk is low and when the branches try to split they die. i have seen this in frogspawns before. all the feeding sounds like you should have high phosphates. the cyano could be a problem as well. my bet is that you need to do some cleaning. i'd start with a 20 percent water change every 4 to 5 days a lot of carbon and some serious skimming. i keep a mixed reef. i actually have a toadstool in mine and they are some of the worst about releasing toxins, so it can be done.

[nobody]

true my toadstool and fiji finger have battles sometimes with slimming but it doesnt seem to effect my other corals though thank god

[ChrisPrusha]

Could very well be chemical warfare. What is your pH?

[Hardhead Cat]

I would check phosphate levels and levels of iodine - - our frogspawn and torch started declining before anything else due to high levels of both.

HHC

[ChilisREasy]

this colt coral is almost 2 feet high & over 1 foot wide...i guess thats the only thing it could be..i know its not the cyano..theres only a small amount left in the tank...no phosphates are showing up, i have fields of halimeda, a large clean up crew & i just cleaned the entire sand bed..all paremeters are exactly where they should be. alk,PH,nitrates,nitrites,phosphates,calcium, i test them all myself & at the LFS. but i do not have anything to test iodine, neither does the LFS carry anything. guess i'll have to sell the colt i'll post a pic so you guys can say if it is too big for this tank..then decide

[fish.freak]

When you say you just cleaned the sand bed, was it the first time in a while, and did the tank get cloudy?

[ChilisREasy]

thats been several months ago, nothing spiked up or down when i did that, infact the only thing that happend was cyano died off. but the hammers in both tanks are not doing good.

[fish.freak]

I'm just fishing for potential causes...

[ChilisREasy]

ok, heres my large tank..my toadstool isnt fully out yet..its 2x that size when fully open..