cab395
New member
Hello everyone. I apologize in advance for writing such a long post. I want to make sure I cover all possibilities of what it could be affecting my frogspawn.
I picked up a two-headed frogspawn as my first LPS coral exactly a week ago. The FS was added on October 6. It started extending almost immediately and looked absolutely stunning. I was so happy with my purchase and its supposed thriving in my tank. On October 7, it was extremely extended and I thought it would be all up hill from here. All day on October 8 it looked brilliant as well. On October 8 at night, I did an extensive tank cleaning where I mixed my sand, scrubbed all my PH's, pumps, glass walls, heaters, etc and ran my skimmer on overdrive to clear the water as fast as possible. The water took until the morning of October 10 to clear (so approximately 30 hours). I was concerned with how long it took to clear, so I did some tests and found a trace of ammonia. All of my corals looked fine besides the FS, and the fish looked great (corals: xenia, ricordea, discosoma shroom, toadstool leather, 3 zoa morphs... fish: two ocellaris clowns and a royal gramma).
The ammonia trace was gone within six hours. I think it was due to me stirring my sand bed, which I will now refrain from doing. The next day, on October 10, the FS was fully extended again and looking beautiful yet again. The next day, on October 11, it was only extended to about half of what its potential is. Fast forward to today, October 13, and it is still not extended very much and seems kind of shriveled. Yesterday, I noticed a brown string coming from both mouths, which I read could be either poop or zooxanthellae. Both mouths were also open while this was happening. They are both sealed shut tightly now. The entire tank looks terrific except for the frogspawn right now. My corals are doing fantastic and my fish are doing just as well. It's just this frogspawn that is looking bothered. It has a small head that is branching out of one of the stems and the small head looks healthy and grows every day. It's probably also worth noting that I moved it a bit today to try and get it to extend more as I thought maybe a rock was preventing it from extending. That was almost four hours ago now and it has not extended much if any more.
The flow is on it so that it gently sways in the current. I am hesitant to move it because I saw just how well it can do in the spot it is currently in.
I should also mention my lighting and tank params. My lighting is a 4 bulb T5 fixture, and the man I purchased the FS from had the EXACT fixture that I have on my tank. When I added the FS I had 2 ATI blue+, 1 ATI aquablue special, and 1 cheap 6700k bulb. I switched out the 6700k bulb on October 9 for a ATI coral+ to improve the colors in the tank (IMO), but I doubt this would have any affect. I thought I may have it in too much light, but there are softies in the tank at the same height doing great. It is in the middle of my rock work, probably in the bottom 1/3 of my tank.
Finally, my params:
SG- 1.025
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - ~3ppm
pH - 8.1
Calcium - 490ppm
Magnesium - 1425 ppm
Alkalinity - 7.7 dKH
Don't have a phosphate kit but have very little algae and do run GFO/carbon.
Here is a before picture from October 7:
I have the stem laying sideways on a rock so that the two heads are pretty close to the rock work.
Before:
And here it is today. Please note that the photo colors the camera picked up are not true to what it looks like to the naked eye. The tips are more pink than purple. Everything looks a lot more purple in this photo than it truly is, in fact. The green is pretty true though. Also note that I moved the stem more towards the back so that both heads can be clearly seen and the back head isn't pushed against the rock.
After:
Any ideas what is going on with this coral? I have moved it around a few times in the last couple of days to position it as well as I could on this rock. I'm going to leave it be for the next week and see how it does if nobody can see anything blatantly wrong with my husbandry with the little guy.
I picked up a two-headed frogspawn as my first LPS coral exactly a week ago. The FS was added on October 6. It started extending almost immediately and looked absolutely stunning. I was so happy with my purchase and its supposed thriving in my tank. On October 7, it was extremely extended and I thought it would be all up hill from here. All day on October 8 it looked brilliant as well. On October 8 at night, I did an extensive tank cleaning where I mixed my sand, scrubbed all my PH's, pumps, glass walls, heaters, etc and ran my skimmer on overdrive to clear the water as fast as possible. The water took until the morning of October 10 to clear (so approximately 30 hours). I was concerned with how long it took to clear, so I did some tests and found a trace of ammonia. All of my corals looked fine besides the FS, and the fish looked great (corals: xenia, ricordea, discosoma shroom, toadstool leather, 3 zoa morphs... fish: two ocellaris clowns and a royal gramma).
The ammonia trace was gone within six hours. I think it was due to me stirring my sand bed, which I will now refrain from doing. The next day, on October 10, the FS was fully extended again and looking beautiful yet again. The next day, on October 11, it was only extended to about half of what its potential is. Fast forward to today, October 13, and it is still not extended very much and seems kind of shriveled. Yesterday, I noticed a brown string coming from both mouths, which I read could be either poop or zooxanthellae. Both mouths were also open while this was happening. They are both sealed shut tightly now. The entire tank looks terrific except for the frogspawn right now. My corals are doing fantastic and my fish are doing just as well. It's just this frogspawn that is looking bothered. It has a small head that is branching out of one of the stems and the small head looks healthy and grows every day. It's probably also worth noting that I moved it a bit today to try and get it to extend more as I thought maybe a rock was preventing it from extending. That was almost four hours ago now and it has not extended much if any more.
The flow is on it so that it gently sways in the current. I am hesitant to move it because I saw just how well it can do in the spot it is currently in.
I should also mention my lighting and tank params. My lighting is a 4 bulb T5 fixture, and the man I purchased the FS from had the EXACT fixture that I have on my tank. When I added the FS I had 2 ATI blue+, 1 ATI aquablue special, and 1 cheap 6700k bulb. I switched out the 6700k bulb on October 9 for a ATI coral+ to improve the colors in the tank (IMO), but I doubt this would have any affect. I thought I may have it in too much light, but there are softies in the tank at the same height doing great. It is in the middle of my rock work, probably in the bottom 1/3 of my tank.
Finally, my params:
SG- 1.025
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - ~3ppm
pH - 8.1
Calcium - 490ppm
Magnesium - 1425 ppm
Alkalinity - 7.7 dKH
Don't have a phosphate kit but have very little algae and do run GFO/carbon.
Here is a before picture from October 7:
I have the stem laying sideways on a rock so that the two heads are pretty close to the rock work.
Before:
And here it is today. Please note that the photo colors the camera picked up are not true to what it looks like to the naked eye. The tips are more pink than purple. Everything looks a lot more purple in this photo than it truly is, in fact. The green is pretty true though. Also note that I moved the stem more towards the back so that both heads can be clearly seen and the back head isn't pushed against the rock.
After:
Any ideas what is going on with this coral? I have moved it around a few times in the last couple of days to position it as well as I could on this rock. I'm going to leave it be for the next week and see how it does if nobody can see anything blatantly wrong with my husbandry with the little guy.
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