Willy Wonka Hammer

The Willy Wonka Hammer is a named-strain hammer coral named for its candy-shop coloring: thick green tentacles that shade from a deeper stem at the base to bright lime along the shaft, each one ending in a flattened hammer tip dipped in gold-yellow. The contrast is the whole appeal — green and gold on the same tentacle — and under blue light the tips fluoresce a vivid lemon while the stems glow green. Extended in gentle current, a colony reads as a cluster of small, brightly painted mallets swaying together.

Like the other named hammers in this database, it is Fimbriaphyllia paraancora, the branching hammer species from sheltered Indo-Pacific reef slopes. Each head is a single polyp carried on a branching skeleton, and the colony defends its space with sweeper tentacles that reach well past the resting outline of the polyps, mostly after dark. The sting is genuine even though the coral looks soft and slow by day.

Care is the standard hammer recipe. Give it medium light and medium flow in the middle of the tank — enough current to keep the tentacles lifting and swaying, never so much that they pin against the skeleton or stay retracted. Acclimate to stronger light gradually over a week or two; the gold tips hold their color best in that middle band. Keep reef parameters in the standard band: 77–79°F, salinity near 35 ppt, alkalinity 8–10 dKH, calcium 400–450 ppm, and magnesium in the normal reef range, with stability valued over any exact number.

Growth is moderate for a hammer and happens by budding: a head slowly pinches into two, and a small frag branches into a young colony across a year or so of steady conditions. Feeding is optional — the coral covers most of its needs from light — but an occasional offering of mysis or fine LPS food placed on the tentacles is taken readily and can support faster budding. Leave generous clearance on all sides, more in the direction of the current, and check the sweepers' true reach after dark before trusting a neighbor's placement. Fragging follows the branching skeleton: cut through bare skeleton below a head, never through living tissue, and let the cut piece heal in moderate flow.

Field notes — what keepers report

- Sweeper reach is the most argued-about part of hammer keeping. Some keepers report long, thin sweepers appearing regularly, especially on colonies with open space around them, while others with long-established hammers report never seeing one at all. The common ground is to judge each colony by watching it after dark rather than trusting a fixed clearance number.

- Color reports split by lighting. Some keepers find the gold tips hold or intensify under moderate, blue-heavy light, while others report the gold washing toward pale yellow-green when the coral sits in dim light, or the tips bleaching back when it is pushed into bright light too fast. Slow moves, with weeks between changes, are the usual recommendation.

- Grouping with other Euphyllia draws mixed reports. Hammers are widely kept alongside frogspawn and other hammers without incident, and many keepers build mixed Euphyllia gardens; others report torches damaging hammers when the two are crowded, and treat torches as the pairing to keep at a distance.

- A head that stops extending or tissue receding at the base draws the same keeper advice across threads: check for pests, confirm alkalinity stability, and look for a neighbor's sting before assuming disease. Keepers are divided on recovery — some report slow regrowth over months once conditions stabilize, others report losses that continued despite intervention — so early action is the shared conclusion.