Hammer Coral Care
Common Name: Hammer Coral
Latin Name: Euphyllia ancora
Class: Cnidaria
Family: Euphyllia
Origin: Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia
Category: LPS
Care Level: Beginner
Temperament: Aggressive
Lighting: Medium
Waterflow: Medium
Placement: Low – Medium
Colors: Various
Growth Speed: Slow – Medium
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Hammer coral is a must have species of coral for your reef aquarium. They come in a variety of colors and add lots of life and movement to your tank. Some of the nicest varieties and unique corals are found in Australia were you can find gold, orange, peach and splattered varieties of hammer coral.
Hammer corals even do well in our 6 gallon pico from Reef Casa
A beautiful golden hammer coral variety from the great barrier reef.
Hammer corals come in three variations of growth type. Wall type, branching type and a large branching semi wall type. They are aggressive corals and should be given room to stretch. Their tentacles will hurt or kill other corals they come into contact to. Hammer fortunately can be placed together to create beautiful hammer gardens. They can also be placed relatively close to other euphyliia such as frogspawn or torch corals but should still have some room. If the the tentacles lightly touch its fine, you want to avoid having the skeletons touch.
An amazing unique pink and gold wall hammer variety.
Hammer corals do well in medium flow and medium light. You want enough flow to keep them dancing in the current and keep them clean but not so much that they can’t open. Too little low flow and they are unable to clean themselves and will become prone to bacterial infections. Angel fish in your aquarium are likely to pick on hammer corals and would not be wise to keep in the same aquarium. Hammer corals main predators are a large flat worm that live on the base and slowly eat them. Luckily, they are slow to move, reproduce are quite large so they are easy to spot and kill with a light coral dip. The eggs are very visible and easily destroyed with some coral glue. Wrasses in your aquarium will help to eradicate euphyllia eating flatworms.
Hammer corals ship well and we have sent many across the country. When buying a hammer coral locally to ensure they are healthy look for plump full heads. Avoid specimens that show ANY sign of exposed skeleton and it can be very difficult to recover from what is affecting them. Hammer corals grow relatively slowly with the branching type being the fastest growing variety. Handle them with care as the tentacles can easily fall off. For best results feed your hammer corals fauna LPS pellets
A garden of different sizes color and types of hammer coral in our 100 gallon mixed reef display tank in our coral store in Toronto.