Frogspawn - any ideas why it is shrinking?

>>klong<< · Feb 9, 2021

reddogf5 said:
Not sure why the alkalinity is so low, until Tuesday the only thing in the tank was the one coral. Baking some baking soda to raise the alk, but where is it going? The salt mixes up at 8.1 dkh at 1.026 SG

I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around where KH goes. Corals will consume it, but It's also tied to pH. In my tank, I was surprised to see KH was being consumed pretty quickly. I started monitoring it closely and dosing appropriately. Since the KH and Ca are mostly under control, I'm pretty much watching my birds nest grow. Literally.

reddogf5 · Feb 12, 2021

Sorry, but I am a bit amused at the water parameter focus. To clarify, this tank is a small 2.7 gallon bowfront. The only thing in it until last week was this coral (the tank now has a small rock anemone). The tank this coral came from is in my house, and runs at 1.025-.026 SG, so the SG is not the issue. It gets water changes of about 25% weekly. After the last water change, the alkalinity was 8.6 and the Mg was 1410.
I have no idea how the alk got so low, this tank gets the same water as the other tank which this coral came from, and the other pieces of this coral in that tank are doing great.
Currently the coral looks stable, the one head that shrunk rapidly appears gone, but the other two haven't shrunk or recovered.
Some other possibly important info:
* This tank has very different lighting, blue, violet and cool white LEDs versus a much broader range and brighter LED light in the tank it came from.
* This tank has rock from a different source, the LFS, versus marco rock from BRS in the tank it came from.
* This tank was broken down and sterilized before being re-cycled as it was overrun with hair algae (my arch-nemesis), so any sort of parasite or critter seems very unlikely.
* Previously, this tank had zoanthids in it, which often had a similar wasting-away issue.

Current photo of troubled coral: