Rapid frogspawn loss/wall fragging help

[aggie13reef]

Well a few weeks ago I purchased a small branching frogspawn, all was fine until about 4 days ago when I lost one of the 3 heads overnight. Then after being out of town this weekend I come home to the remaining heads gone. I then noticed the smaller head on my wall frogspawn has died as well. Now I removed the branching frag and am thinking frag the wall frogspawn ASAP and remove the small head before it wipes out the nice sized larger head. My question is what could have caused the rapid death and what is a good strategy to frag the wall?

 

[enchelycore808]

Tank params would help figure out what's wrong. As for fragging walls, I usually dremel them in to chunks and iodine dip. I try to only cut the skeleton with the dremel and razor the tissue but it's not always easy. You have to watch out because there's always a chance the damaged tissue can become infected. I think it was tidal gardens on youtube had a pretty good video on fragging them.

 

[aggie13reef]

KH-- 180 mg/L
pH-- 8.3
Ammonia-- 0
Nitrate-- 20-50 mg/L (Nutrafin test, difficult to distinguish between 20 and 50)
Nitrite-- 0

Last water change was on the 5th of July ~15%.

 

[enchelycore808]

Nitrates are a bit high but other then that seems ok. Could maybe try dipping them in a antibiotic dip and changing a bit more water.

 

[aggie13reef]

Alright I'll change a little more water and see what happens. Any thoughts on why Nitrates would be high right after a water change? I've never had any issues with high nitrates before.

 

[RA]

If I did the math right in converting the alk to dkh it seems that your alk is low.

 

[RA]

No one else has chimed in. When I convert your alk to a dkh reading I get a 5 which is really low. So if that is correct then your Ph can't be 8.3. Anyone?

 

[aggie13reef]

Well my computer freaked out on me ha my reply is in the text below.

 

[aggie13reef]

No one else has chimed in. When I convert your alk to a dkh reading I get a 5 which is really low. So if that is correct then your Ph can't be 8.3. Anyone?

I retested pH and it tested between 8 and 8.5 with a Nutrafin test I would say closer to 8 (so I said 8.3, could be .2 or .1). I worked all day today so I did not get a chance to pick up any RODI. Going to try my best to get some after work tomorrow, I really want to get my Nitrates lowered.

 

[RA]

Well I will tell you this if your DKH is a 5 your corals will most likely die. I haven't checked Ph on my tank in years and my tanks are doing great. Your ALK is much more important. Get a good ALK test kit like Salifert and re-test and post your readings in DKH values. Or if you believe that your test kit is accurate then I would add a small amount of baking soda until you get the DKH up to 8.