Hammer Coral is shrinking - PLEASE HELP!!!

I am new to SW hobby and have just purchased this 6G nano system from craigslist. The seller said that his hammer coral was huge before, but then started to shrink and now it looks like it barely comes out. I've checked all chemical levels and they all read fine. I am not feeding it, weekly CW 20%. For light i've got one bulb of T5HO 460nm Actinic and T5HO 12 KK Power White and run both of them 8 hours a day. I don’t have any fish and i will also post pics of closest corals. Please help.

 

hmm it doesn't look well at all, although euphs are very resilient that still looks like it's on its way out.

- How long have you had it in the tank, has it always looked that bad?
- What type of lighting was it under in the sellers tank?
- So, he sold it to you and was like "it's been shrinking" before you got it?
- what's your salinity at? (your other corals look fine though)

If all your params are fine, your lighting is ok IMO, I feel like this is specific to the coral. I've had a frogspawn that melted suddenly due to brown jelly disease, hopefully it's not that.

 

Thanks for the reply MoJoe.
I just purchased this tank from someone on craigslist on Tuesday. He said it was huge and very healthy about 6 months ago and was slowly started to shrink.
- For light i am using seller's light - T5HO 460nm Actinic (18watt) and T5HO 12 KK Power White (18watt) and run both of them 8 hours a day. It is possible that the bulbs are old and need to be replaced (do you think i should replace them now?)

All chemicals are are within the norms. There is some green bubble algae that i will be manually taking out of the tank this weekend, but other than that i don't see any other issues. I was thinking of perhaps feeding it some shrimp. Let me know what you think.

 

I have been lucky enough to not have many issues with Euphs in the past. Have had numerous torches, hammers, frogspawns over the past few years. The one frogspawn I lost to brown jelly disease looked very similar to your Torch. One day its heads began to recede one after another and each slowly melted away to reveal its skeleton (similar to yours). Although your heads do have some life in them still. I can only speak from my own personal experience that I feel like it may be a goner unfortunately.

That is just my opinion, if it hasn't extended any heads and has been progressively getting worse, that's def not a good sign. Hopefully I'm wrong, but google "brown jelly disease" and take a look at other pics/descriptions.

Hopefully others will chime with their advice.

 

That galaxia thats behind it, how close is it and does the flow make the tenticles reach towards the hammer?

 

Have you tried moving it around to different spots in the tank?

You have a big thriving frogspawn behind it....

I don't have experience with euphyllia, but I've had plenty of coral that do poorly in one spot but perk up and take off if I move them a few inches over. Can be flow, light, neighbors or a combination of those. Some like flow, some don't care, some don't like it.

I might also recommend trying to feed it... it looks a bit bleached out, so the light isn't doing it much good at the moment.

Rick

 

Thank you, i'll research brown jelly desease.

It doesnt touch it, but it is pretty close, within an inch. I'll definally move it today.

Thank you ALL i greatly appreciate all your feedback. I'll move it and feed it tonight and see how it looks.

 

My galaxia is smaller than that one and can sting corals 8" away.

 

I am very hopeful that the issue is the galaxea right behind it. I've moved the hammer last night as far as possible, but since the tank is only 6G there is limited space (it is now about 3-4 inches away). I'll also feed it some mysis shrimp tomorrow before CW.

 

Cool, I wouldn't bother feeding it until it starts to extends again. Just see how it does over the next few days in terms of the heads coming out. Best of luck.