Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care

🌸 Coral Trouble Card

Hammer Coral Coral Trouble Card

The one page to have ready when a coral starts to slip. Corals almost never need a vet — recovery is a water-chemistry, light/flow, or pest fix. This walks you through the checks in order. Print it, keep it by the tank.

Black & white saves ink and prints cleanly on any printer.

Not sure it's serious yet? Run the symptom checker or the water-test checker first — many worries turn out to be a husbandry fix.

Coralkin honest saltwater & reef care · coralkin.com
Hammer Coral — Coral Trouble Card

🔬 There's no vet for corals — diagnose the water & environment

Corals almost never need (or have) a vet. A struggling colony is a chemistry, lighting/flow, or pest problem you fix yourself. Work these Coralkin tools:

📇 Fill this in now

My system
What I'm seeing
Recent changes

🚨 Trouble signs now?

  • Tentacles staying deflated/retracted — usually too much flow, or a swing in alkalinity; ease the flow and check chemistry.
  • Receding flesh or exposed skeleton at the base — often an alk/Ca swing, or too much light too fast.
  • A brown, jelly-like film spreading over the tentacles (“brown jelly”) — act fast: remove the affected piece, dip it, and improve water quality.

🚗 First things to check

✅ Do

  • Test the full parameter set — salinity, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, phosphate and temperature — and compare to targets.
  • Check the lighting and flow at this coral's exact spot.
  • Look for pests and for irritation from aggressive neighbours.
  • Check for recent changes — new livestock, a dosing change, a big water change.

⛔ Don't

  • Don't reach for OTC “cures” or dose blindly.
  • Don't change everything at once — stability matters more than any single number.
  • Don't keep a badly-failing colony next to healthy ones without isolating it or fragging off the healthy tissue.

📋 This coral's targets

Colony / form
A wall or branching skeleton topped with flowing hammer-/anchor-tipped tentacles; grows into a showpiece head by head.
Lighting
Low–moderate — about 50–150 PAR. Modest light is fine; stronger light can deepen colour but isn't required.
Water flow
Low-to-moderate, gentle and indirect — enough to sway the tentacles, never so strong they retract or tear.
Placement
Lower-to-mid rockwork or the sand, in gentle flow — with SPACE: keep non-Euphyllia corals at least ~6 in (15 cm) from its sweeper tentacles.
Temperature
75–82°F (24–28°C).
pH
8.1–8.4.
Specific gravity
1.023–1.026 (reef-standard ≈35 ppt).
Other targets
LPS build a stony skeleton — keep alkalinity (≈8–11 dKH), calcium (≈400–450 ppm) and magnesium (≈1300–1450 ppm) stable. More forgiving than SPS, but don't let them swing.
Feeding
Mostly photosynthetic; a subdued eater that benefits from the occasional meaty morsel (mysis) but doesn't demand target feeding.
Growth & spread
Grows steadily head by head into a showpiece; fragged by experienced keepers (cut the skeleton, not the flesh).
Natural range
Indo-Pacific reefs.

🌸 A struggling coral is almost always telling you about its water, light, flow, or a pest — not an infection a vet can treat. Stabilise your parameters to target, confirm the light and flow suit this coral, and rule out pests and aggressive neighbours before changing anything drastic. Sudden swings are themselves a stressor.

❓ Work through

  • Is a parameter off-target?
  • Is the light or flow wrong for this coral?
  • Any pests, or aggressive neighbours?
  • What changed recently?