Frogspawn polyps shrinking over time

[dbrewsky]

Hello,

I purchased this wonderful large colony of frogspawn roughly a year ago:

Over time the polyp extension has gotten smaller and the overall color and fluorescence has reduced. Location, lighting, flow have remained the same during this year. This is from a couple months ago and currently the extension averages half of this.

What do you think is influencing this change? Par is roughly 250 from ATI 8 bulb t-5 and Kessil 360we accents running 30%. Flow i would say is moderate, can see polyps getting moved around, not violently, but at the same time algae and crud likes to collect near the base.


What change would be likely to return this colony to its previous extension and color? Thank you!

 

[cloak]

Does anything in your tank ever interact with the Frogspawn? Do you ever feed the Frogspawn? Sometimes when a fish or invertebrate makes the connection between a coral and food the harassment can be relentless. I'm not sure if that's what's going on here, but it's definitely something to look out for. Maybe even check the coral at night with a flashlight and see if you can spot anything that might be a problem. GL.

 

[dbrewsky]

no fish interaction, its isolated on the sand bed from other corals. I do not feed the coral directly, however i broadcast feed the tank and plenty of small particles make it to the coral. Its as if over time the polyps are slowly withering away getting smaller and smaller

 

[Joe's Coral Reef]

250 is on the high end of what my Frogspawn sees, but doesn't seem like it should be an issue. How many hours a day is it seeing 250 par? Maybe too much flow? What's your alk? At this point it seems like it's been having issues a while, so finding fix is going to be hard. I would maybe break it up, place the separate pieces in different parts of the tank. That would give yourself a better chance of finding out if it's lighting, flow or harassment.

 

[dbrewsky]

its hard to tell if its too much flow, i might move it to a lower light lower flow area and give it time to see if it makes a difference. alk is pretty consistently at 8 cal 450. roughly 8 hours of full blast lighting for the sps as the tank is primarily sps.