Hammer

[OgreMkV]

How do you take care of a hammer coral? Is it pretty much like a torch with out the stalk?

Lexie brought me home a nice one. Right now, I just put the stalk of the hammer in the sand and it seems to really like where it's at. It's already expanded larger than the tank it came from.

Do I need to feed it? What?

Thanks
Kevin

 

[fsn77]

Feeding a hammer coral isn't required, but you can if you like. Small meaty items work well, like small mysis or brine shrimp.

Keep an eye on your calcium and alkalinity levels, as it'll be consuming those for building new skeleton.

Hammer corals, much like frogspawn and torch corals, will grow nicely without a whole lot of specific attention given to them. I think that's great, personally, as I really like them.

 

[OgreMkV]

excellent. I'm real good at not giving attention.

 

[Conski]

Haha los corals like torchs hammers and frogs are nice and easy, I never feed Mine but when i feed my fish thy usually grab something floating by. Either way they're pretty easy corals and they grow pretty quick! I love my torch especially becuase my clowns took to it! Unles you have alot of corals your hammer isn't gonna take alot of your alk at all and you can easily replace it with a nice to water change once a week

 

[OgreMkV]

Cool. I placed my hammer's stalk in the sand and will move it in a few days (I'm rearranging rock work).

Is it OK to leave it in the sand, or should I secure it to the rock?

I'm having to add a calcium based marine buffer anyway, so the calcium shouldn't be a big deal. It's been a while since the last test (lazy).

 

[Conski]

It'll do fine in either i'm sure I have all mine on the rocks though so I can save sand space for my chalice zoas and palys leathers and now all my sps, it's all prefrence though I keep then higher so they don't sting my other corals because they are pretty agresdive

 

[fsn77]

Down on the sand, up on the rocks... most specimens are pretty adaptive. Unless your tank is really deep, down on the sand usually isn't an issue. If you're going to move it up significantly higher in the tank, you may want to progressively move it to that level to prevent the increased amount of light from shocking it. It should be able to adapt to being higher in the tank under many different lighting situations.