Frogspawn frag with wide open mouth

[sarduci]

Hey all,

I don't have any pictures, but I just received 3 frags of frogspawn via mail about a week past. One of the frags is doing great, waving around, nice tight mouth and good color. The other two, not so great....

I've been leaving them alone, low indirect flow, lower light than what they had been getting. Last night I went to blow off the two that weren't looking so good, and a gentle squeeze blew the top off of one of them. The other one didn't retract at all when I squeezed water on it, but I saw part of the skeleton showing on the back side.

I'm guessing that the one is definitely a goner, but the other one I'm not to sure on. The mouth is wide open, and not reacting to anything.

Any advice? All frags are about the size of the tip of your thumb, not tiny but not what I'd call big.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Julio]

what are you water parameters? Try testing the water from the bottom of the tank rather then right off the top since ammonia, Nitrates and nitrite concentrate at the bottom of the tank.

 

[sarduci]

All of the frags are on the bottom of the tank, and I just did a 80% water change 3 days before putting the frags into my QT (10 gallon tank, had freash saltwater leftover from my 90), so about 10 days ago. No fish in there, only 3 small snails eating little pieces of algea it throw in there for them and misc tiny fragments of shrimp that floated away when I tried to feed the frogspawn. Only gave them tiny slivers of shrimp once in the past week 2 days ago.

Tank has been at and still tests at 0-0-0 for months, SG at 1.025, temp is 78 all day long, it's only zoas and the (now) 2 frags of frogspawn in the bare bottom tank.

 

[Julio]

doing such a large water change on yoru system can actually shock it. Is better that you do small frequent water changes rather than one large one.

 

[sarduci]

It's a QT tank, it's not a full blown aquarium. It's only housing 20 differnt zoa frags and the 2 frogspawns. I keep it cycled all of the time by feeding the snails. I've dropped fish in there the day after a 100% water change and had no cycle in the 8 week QT. There is no substrate, only a sponge in the overflow. The sponge is more than enough to reseed the water, which is the same thing people do with sponge filters in fry tanks.

 

[stykthyn]

dont give up on it, When I moved my parent colony looked like it was going to die for about a year, now it is overtaking the tank and I have to prune it every couple of months. Keep the SPG constant and keep it out of direct water flow.

 

[sandiegan]

frogspawn, at least in my tank, is/was extremely hard to kill. I've had frags that were buried for a week+ that were still alive and came back. don't give up.

 

[sarduci]

Well, here's a little update:

The damaged one is looking better, the mouth no longer hangs open all day. One day it'll be almost closed, the next day mostly open. The one frag that made it safely here is looking really nice. Four more weeks till I'll get the good one in the main tank. The injured one will continue to live with the zoas while I grow them out and frag them.