Hello all,
I have been having trouble with two corals now for a couple weeks. I have a gold hammer that has two heads, and one of the heads bailed about a week and a half ago and my frogspawn is not looking good. My system is about 2 years old, 10 gallons and has been running steady for a while. I have pretty much left it on autopilot, not changing the dosing for the past 8 months or so with 10% weekly water changes. Since the head bailed I started testing again and found my alk at 11.9. I believe that since the tank was looking good for many months I got lazy with testing, and I let the alk get too high. I have been slowly lowering it back down by lowering the dosing, and as of today my params are:
Alk: 10.1
Ca: 466
Nitrate: <25
Salinity: 35
The other head on my gold hammer looks like it is about to bail as welll, as part of the head is not attached to the skeleton. About a week ago I noticed my frogspawn has a head with a mouth that is gaping, and it has been worse since. I have another frogspawn that also hasn't been opening up as much recently, but I have two other hammers and a torch that have remain unaffected. The only other changes to the tank of note is that I now mix my own salt (Fritz Pro RPM), and did my first water change using that a couple days ago (3 days). I wanted to see if you all think the culprit is the alkalinity swing, or could it be something else since it is not effecting all my LPS. Please let me know if you have had a head bailout before, and what you think the cause was. I have been dealing with vermatid snails, but I don't know if this is the cause (I have been trying to eliminate by hand and with bumblebee snails). Thank you all for your help.
Also side note, if anyone has had success rehabilitating a hammer bailout head, let me know what you did. I currently have the bailed out hammer head in a small cage with a bunch of rocks, it has been opening up all the way since it bailed two weeks ago, but I just don't know if it will ever re-attach to a rock.
I have been having trouble with two corals now for a couple weeks. I have a gold hammer that has two heads, and one of the heads bailed about a week and a half ago and my frogspawn is not looking good. My system is about 2 years old, 10 gallons and has been running steady for a while. I have pretty much left it on autopilot, not changing the dosing for the past 8 months or so with 10% weekly water changes. Since the head bailed I started testing again and found my alk at 11.9. I believe that since the tank was looking good for many months I got lazy with testing, and I let the alk get too high. I have been slowly lowering it back down by lowering the dosing, and as of today my params are:
Alk: 10.1
Ca: 466
Nitrate: <25
Salinity: 35
The other head on my gold hammer looks like it is about to bail as welll, as part of the head is not attached to the skeleton. About a week ago I noticed my frogspawn has a head with a mouth that is gaping, and it has been worse since. I have another frogspawn that also hasn't been opening up as much recently, but I have two other hammers and a torch that have remain unaffected. The only other changes to the tank of note is that I now mix my own salt (Fritz Pro RPM), and did my first water change using that a couple days ago (3 days). I wanted to see if you all think the culprit is the alkalinity swing, or could it be something else since it is not effecting all my LPS. Please let me know if you have had a head bailout before, and what you think the cause was. I have been dealing with vermatid snails, but I don't know if this is the cause (I have been trying to eliminate by hand and with bumblebee snails). Thank you all for your help.
Also side note, if anyone has had success rehabilitating a hammer bailout head, let me know what you did. I currently have the bailed out hammer head in a small cage with a bunch of rocks, it has been opening up all the way since it bailed two weeks ago, but I just don't know if it will ever re-attach to a rock.