Keep an eye on your calcium, nitrates and salinity levels as you watch your corals grow. Despite their bubbly appearance, hammer corals are not sponges. They cannot grow through water and salt alone.
Even reef salts with added nutrients can only help a fragment of what we are looking to do. Again my tanks live and breathe from C-Balance as it provides the two main factors we need to control for optimal growth. Calcium and alkalinity. First off, hammer corals will grow at a much higher rate when provided with higher calcium levels, sitting around the ppm range.
This is a major component of your hammer corals structure. Even the most powerful reef salts will only provide a small amount of calcium to your tank. This is why most owners will go years before seeing their first new head budding out of the corals. Next on the list is raising your alkalinity to the dKH range. This will make your coral much more comfortable and wiling to eat. With the water set up perfectly, our corals will be slowly take in the nutrients in the water and begin their growth.
As with human muscles, corals will not be able to grow much without being supplied excess nutrients. This can be done two ways, the second far more effective than the first.
This is how most owners go about feeding their fish. As food floats around the fish are free to swim and eat as they please. Corals are not fish and do not swim. With their much needed nutrients flying all over the tank, very little of it will land within the corals grasp. This is why we use:. Using a variety of methods, we can put the food exactly where we need it. Lazy crabs, picky mandarins and unmoving corals can all benefit from target feeding.
Just per head will be far more than they would usually catch on a normal day. While this may seem like barely feeding your mind will change when your coral doubles and you have 10 hungry heads to feed. Clean out any excess food before turning your power head back on. Feeding is done. Consistency is key. As with many things in life doing something well once is not going to do much. You need to do it right every day to have the best results.
Feeding corals by hand can be tedious but it only takes a few minutes each day. While it is true they can go on the offensive with chemical attacks they do have predators. The most common culprit? Peppermint Shrimp. Commonly used to fight algae and aiptasia, these hungry shrimp are no friend of soft, brainy corals. At night? I've never seen them - I wonder if that's why some of my corals are struggling? My hammer and frogspawn eat mysis and brine shrimp I just squirt some onto them once a week during the day while they are all stretched out.
Turn off the pumps if stuff is floating away. With the exception of mysis and smaller food articles, my hammer and frogspawn both need the pumps all turned off in order to eat and not lose their food.
Depending on the coral's size, you can feed meatier foods, such as silversides. My hammer has a huge mouth and can easily take silversides:. Euphyllias hammer, frogspawn, etc don't need to be fed on a regular basis like anemones or some other corals, but they do benefit from it. If they are healthy-looking but no food sticks, as long as you have sufficient light, they should be fine. But, i know mine are healthy because of it is splitting and growing longer tentacles. One question for everybody else who might want to know also do you feed at night or the day?
I feed at night because the fish like to help if they're not "in bed" yet. It takes several hours to get a full silverside down, so after that first night, I have just cut them in half and given the coral half of it. If it is growing and splitting, it is definitly doing well. Mine has only budded two more tiny, tiny heads so far. That's awesome! Usually, you should be able to just squirt or drop the food gently onto the coral's tentacles and it will slowly move it to the mouth where it eats it.
When I feed smaller foods like mysis, I never see the hammer's mouth, if that helps any. It has just dropped things before, though. Varga Well-Known Member. I stopped feeding them months ago and they are so happy right now. You also benefit from not putting all that food into your tank. I only saw them barely hold on to it for awhile. I just put reef roids and coral frenzy in for them and the other corals I quit trying to feed my frogspawn. It doesn't really hold on to the food.
It might catch some food when I feed the rest of the tank, but I think it mainly uses the light for energy. It's growing like a weed though! I also do not feed my frogspawn or torch corals. In fact the only corals that I specifically feed are my suns, my donut, and my open brain. The rest seem to do fine with whatever they catch in the water column. Click to expand Jake Member. I tried squirting cyclopeeze on it but I think it was not good because the cleaner shrimp and peppermint shrimps would go in and clean it out.
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