The Wall Hammer Coral is a somewhat less well known cousin of the Branching Hammer but it is beautiful in its own right. It is sometimes known as the Anchor Coral due to the anchor shaped tips on its tentacles. The Wall Hammer Coral doesn’t branch, but rather slowly grows from each end. This means that Wall Hammers tend to be roughly linear in shape, as opposed to the more rounded branching variety. They are slower growing than the branching variet. One advantage of Wall Hammers is that their colours tend to be regarded as more varied and vibrant. They can be found in colours such as green, blue, gold, orange and purple.
Wall Hammers are found on reef slopes at depths of up to 100 feet. Because they are so hard to frag, almost all of the corals of this type available for sale are wild collected, generally from Indonesia or Australia. In a home aquarium they can be placed anywhere in the bottom half of the tank as long as there is a large enough flat surface. Due to the shape of their skeleton and their growth pattern, they are often placed on the substrate but could be placed on the rockwork if desired. Regardless of where they are placed, they should be given ample room since they are an aggressive coral with stinging tentacles. They can be placed next to other hammer corals or frogspawn without issue. Some hobbyists also have had luck placing them next to torch corals, but this is a topic of much debate.
As a relatively deep water coral, Wall Hammer Corals do best when exposed to moderate levels of light. They can tolerate higher light levels if they have been acclimatized to them slowly. In terms of flow, is it necessary to strike a balance between enough flow to keep the coral clean but not so much flow that the tentacles are damaged. If a Hammer Coral is exposed to too much flow the tentacles will either retract or may become long and stringy.
Wall Hammer Corals are photosynthetic and are able to meet their energy needs using the aquarium lighting. However, they will grow faster and display better colouration if they are provided with supplemental food. A good choice for this is Vitalis LPS Pellets.
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