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Clueless About Hammers...

2K views 17 replies 6 participants last post by  ShankStripedLyretail 
#1 ·
Slowly stocking my 30g softy reef and just bought a few more (established) colonies today from a fellow hobbyist. Along with everything else, I ended up with a couple of tiny heads of purple tipped branching hammer (euphyllia parancora). It's skeleton had been colonized by metallic green star polyps, but these two are still alive (currently in QT).

I've been so busy learning soft corals, that I hardly know anything about stonies! This is one of my favorite corals, but I don't like adding something I don't know about.

Any tips for care/placement/feeding/compatibility... I really want to know everything. And LiveAquaria didn't go so in depth... All my corals are listed in my Tank Spec page. If I have to, I will trade it in to my dealer.

I also want to break the rock they're on so it's two separate corals... But I don't want to harm the skeleton and risk an infection; I've heard of using a tight rubberband to create a "chisel point", but is this a good idea?

Thanks in advance!
Kris
 

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#3 ·
Thanks, ynot. Good looking colony! I'm thinking they'll go on the sandbed long term after quarantine...

Do you think it would be okay sharing a tank with a sinularia sp.? Borneman writes they can be aggravated by their terpenes, but I'm running activated carbon on my skimmer... :arg:
 
#4 ·
they have some pretty long sweeper tentacles and can do some pretty bad damage to other corals so need to be careful where they get placed. They also shouldn't be in direct flow because they have sharp skeletons that will cut their soft tissues if they are being whipped around by direct flow. so I'd go a step further than ynot and say medium indirect flow =)
 
#5 ·
Thanks, Rin. It'll be the only coral on the sandbed besides a ricordea on the other side of the tank after everything gets rearranged. The flow in the tank is very indirect as it's a hex tank and I had to do some finagling to get it to work. I have several sheltered spots in front of my LR it can go.
 
#7 ·
cant tell from the picture where the hammer is relative to the GSP / section of the "rock" you want to break. Are you sure its a rock and not part of the skeleton of the coral?

You should be able to scrape the GSP off, it should pull off as almost a plastic mat that is glued on to the skeleton... then you could use a rubber band to reattach it someplace else if you want to keep it and are able to remove it as a big mat..
 
#8 ·
cant tell from the picture where the hammer is relative to the GSP / section of the "rock" you want to break. Are you sure its a rock and not part of the skeleton of the coral?

You should be able to scrape the GSP off, it should pull off as almost a plastic mat that is glued on to the skeleton... then you could use a rubber band to reattach it someplace else if you want to keep it and are able to remove it as a big mat..
It's the skeleton. The polyps just overgrew it to the point of killing all but these last two heads... Sorry! I keep saying "rock"! I would guess that if I didn't scrape them off, then these two heads will eventually be gone? (Hope this is a better picture).

The rock is so gnarled and branching that I'm not even sure if I could get the polyps off cleanly. And I've just noticed, taking the picture, that one head is releasing brown zooxanthella...
 

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#10 ·
That's kinda what I feared...

Well I may try to break this branch off the rest of the skeleton by this really narrow joint and just scrape the GSP off, maybe glue the mat to a rock. The guy I got all these corals from had let everything overgrow, including the stars. I just hope I'm not risking a brown jelly infection as the hammers are already stressed out...
 

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#11 ·
UPDATE!

I separated the two pieces at the joint in the picture above. The skeleton had already broken and was only held on by the GSP mat! I scraped all the stars off the skeleton and ended up placing all of my corals into my DT (much more stable)...

Here they are today! Kinda bleached (still expelling zooxanthella :() slowly acclimating to LEDs. The head that had been almost overcome by GSP has receded, but I'm hoping it'll make a comeback! No more stonies!

Thanks for the help guys! :)
 

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#14 ·
Done today! Thanks guys :)

It's still getting used to the new spot, but both heads were as extended as possible earlier (albeit with some algae expulsion, wish it would stop throwing up...) I've also dialed back the lights, as my large toadstool I got with this batch is mad, too.

After a few close looks at it, I'm think it's purple tipped frogspawn... :confused: oh well, it came as an extra anyway.
 
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