Ultra Yellow Branching Hammer Coral

Description

Ultra Yellow Branching Hammer Coral brings vivid yellow fluorescence and long, hammer-shaped polyps to an LPS or mixed reef. Its color is especially bright under blue or actinic reef lighting.

Give the fleshy polyps gentle movement without allowing direct flow to pin them against the skeleton. Leave open space around the colony because hammer corals can extend stinging sweeper tentacles after dark.

Care Guide

• Care Level: Intermediate
• Lighting: Low to moderate (75–150 PAR)
• Flow: Moderate, indirect and variable
• Placement: Lower-middle to middle rockwork with the tissue clear of surrounding rock
• Feeding: Photosynthetic; optional small meaty or planktonic foods 1–2 times weekly
• Aggression: Aggressive; allow at least 4–6 inches for nighttime sweepers and inspect after dark

Conditioning and Shipping: Conditioned in our Key West systems under Florida Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072. Livestock ships UPS Next Day Air on our regular Tuesday and Wednesday shipping schedule.

What to expect when it arrives

Open the box the day it lands. A shipped Euphyllia arrives retracted, often with the tentacles pulled almost completely into the skeleton, and it can look alarming if you have not seen it before. That is normal. Float the sealed bag for 15 minutes to match temperature, then drip acclimate over 45 to 60 minutes. Do not add the shipping water to your tank.

Give it a low-flow, moderate-light spot on the first day and leave it there. Most torches and hammers begin partial extension within 24 hours and are fully open in one to three days. The single most common mistake is deciding after six hours that the spot is wrong and moving it — every move restarts the adjustment clock, and a coral moved four times in a week may never settle.

Placement, once it has opened

Watch the tentacle behavior rather than the PAR number. Tentacles should drift and sway with a slow rhythm. If they stream in one direction and stay there, flow is too strong. If they hang limp and short with the coral inflated, flow may be too weak. Adjust one variable at a time and give it three days between changes.

Allow six inches of clear space in every direction before you commit to a location. Euphyllia sweeper tentacles extend well beyond the daytime footprint after lights out, and the neighbor that looks safe at noon may be getting burned at 2 a.m. If you keep other Euphyllia, they generally tolerate each other, but torches will win any exchange.

Growth and fragging

A settled Euphyllia adds heads by splitting, and in a stable tank with occasional feeding you should see a head begin to divide within three to six months. Branching forms separate onto their own stalks and can be cut apart cleanly once the branch has elongated; wall forms are harder to divide and most keepers leave them whole. A colony that has not split in a year is usually reporting a flow or light problem rather than bad genetics.

Tank mates and compatibility

Keep it away from any coral it can reach. Peaceful fish are fine, but large angels, some butterflies and a few wrasses will pick at Euphyllia tentacles, and a coral that retracts every time a specific fish passes is telling you something. Clownfish will sometimes host in a torch; this is usually tolerated but can damage the tissue over months.