Hammer coral

[lando]

LFS has a really nice looking hammer coral for $60. they have had it for several weeks and it is doing great. Just wondering how hard they are to take care of. My understanding is med light and med. flow. how aggressive are they? thanks! Lando

 

[kidkameleon3]

I got a frag of a branching one a month or 2 ago. I have a 55w 240W NO light and it is in the middle of the tank w/ above medium,but not high flow.It has already branched once in here and is open like a flower all day. if that hepls.Also I got mine for like $15 online from a guy. $60 seems steep even if it is midsize what have you.Look around a bit first

 

[Gauge]

I agree that the price isn't the best in the world. I've seen worse, though. Hammers are not hard to keep at all. I went without one for the longest time because I was told over and over how difficult they are to keep and how much light they need, etc, etc. I put mine in a 42-gallon tank with 110w of PC lights (half .03 actinic and half 10,000K) for about three months and it never looked anything short of completely happy. Even when I was having some water quality issues and other corals were reacting poorly, this guy looked great. Now it's in a 92-gallon tank with perfect water quality, 110w of .03 actinic PC lights and a 250w 10,000K MH. It looks great.

As far as how aggressive they are, they do seem to reach out fairly often, but I don't know how bad the sting is. I make sure not to keep mine in close proximity to anything else. Hope this helps.

 

[CBRGuy]

I paid 60 for my Hammer. I about the size of a hand maybe a little bit bigger. I have kept mine with no problems yet. They are aggressive they have a 6" reach from what I understand. I never monitored it at night when the send out sweeper tenticals

 

[HoopsGuru]

Depends on tank size and tankmates as well. If putting it into a smaller tank with softies, I would be sure to have an efficient skimmer to reduce the dangers of allelopathy.

 

[BBReef]

Ya to me me $60 is too much. around here the larger pieces are no more than 30 and frags for like 10. i have two, got hem both as frags with two heads, now one has like 12 heads and the other has 5 or 6. i think they are pretty hardy and have never seen mine send out sweepers, not even at night. i would definitly recommend them.

 

[kidkameleon3]

Funny how all of us owners all heard the "fish guys" tell us that they sweep at night and to be careful yet none have seen it ever. I have watched for it suprised the tank all in the middle of the ngith and never seen anything of the such

 

[ClamKnuckle]

what are hammer's feeding requirements?

 

[kidkameleon3]

light , I also feed brine or what have you directly into it sometimes it doesn;t seem to like it as much as some of the other corasl ,but it eats regardless

 

[packfan2204]

if u get a hammer, make sure you get a branching hammer, that way if part of it starts to die, it doesn't spread to the rest of the animal and you can just snap that particular branch off

 

[lando]

Thanks all for your responses. I have done some comparison shopping around were I live and hammers here run from 50-80 bucks. Keep in mind this is Minnesota. I could order one online for a lot less but when you figure in shipping, you do not save much. Plus, I would rather hand-pick my corals. the $60 one at my LFS is the best looking one I have seen. It is a branching hammer with seven large, full heads on it. I think it may be the one. Thanks again! Lando

 

[kidkameleon3]

let us know how it goes, good luck

 

[Joshsmit56001]

I love my hammer coral. It is a rare one and it is a very bright green. If I had a digital cam I would post pics. Hopefully soon I will get one, maybe x-mas!

 

[SquishyFish]

I had a scrolling hammer that I picked up for 80.00. Open, it was the size of a vollyeball. I had it under 175watt M/h lights in my 175gal tank, half way down. They definately do not like high light. 175watts on my is not considered high light and even that was too much for it. It looked great for several months, but slowly declined. I recently moved the aquarium...that was the straw that broke its back. One memeber mentioned PC lighthing...thats perfect in my opinion.

Squishy