Hi all!
I had a question regarding a birdsnest frag I’ve had for a couple weeks. It is a $10 frag of green birdsnest, and I put it in lighting that was approximately 140-150 PAR (kinda low looking back) and plenty of flow. My parameters have been:
Salinity: 1.025 sg
pH: 8.0-8.1 (have had issues with abiotic precipitation above this so I keep it here)
Ca: 435 ppm
Alk: 9.3-9.8 dKH (it rose about 0.1 dKH per day due to the addition of new rock; I have dialed in my dose again)
Mg: 1350-1400 ppm
Phosphate: 0.05-0.1 ppm (dropped after a water change)
Nitrate: 5-10 ppm
The frag has had outstanding polyp extension and I have been feeding it daily with Red Sea AB+. The last couple of days, however, the tissue has begun to recede and some polyps have disappeared. The frag is only about an inch long and a couple millimeters thick, so it won’t take long for this to spread.
My question is, what could be the cause of tissue loss? I have heard that they hate Alk swings, but that was a very gradual increase. Lighting was pretty dim for birdsnest, so could that be the issue? I have two Kessil A360x’s, and I moved them closer to the surface to bring the PAR to between 160 and 180 there (this is at 94% intensity, which is run for about 3 hours; the intensity drops off significantly on either end of the hours before and after that). I am working to bring the intensity slowly up to 100%, which should bring the PAR in that spot to 170-200.
Thoughts? Let me know if there is something else you noticed or if you need more information!
I had a question regarding a birdsnest frag I’ve had for a couple weeks. It is a $10 frag of green birdsnest, and I put it in lighting that was approximately 140-150 PAR (kinda low looking back) and plenty of flow. My parameters have been:
Salinity: 1.025 sg
pH: 8.0-8.1 (have had issues with abiotic precipitation above this so I keep it here)
Ca: 435 ppm
Alk: 9.3-9.8 dKH (it rose about 0.1 dKH per day due to the addition of new rock; I have dialed in my dose again)
Mg: 1350-1400 ppm
Phosphate: 0.05-0.1 ppm (dropped after a water change)
Nitrate: 5-10 ppm
The frag has had outstanding polyp extension and I have been feeding it daily with Red Sea AB+. The last couple of days, however, the tissue has begun to recede and some polyps have disappeared. The frag is only about an inch long and a couple millimeters thick, so it won’t take long for this to spread.
My question is, what could be the cause of tissue loss? I have heard that they hate Alk swings, but that was a very gradual increase. Lighting was pretty dim for birdsnest, so could that be the issue? I have two Kessil A360x’s, and I moved them closer to the surface to bring the PAR to between 160 and 180 there (this is at 94% intensity, which is run for about 3 hours; the intensity drops off significantly on either end of the hours before and after that). I am working to bring the intensity slowly up to 100%, which should bring the PAR in that spot to 170-200.
Thoughts? Let me know if there is something else you noticed or if you need more information!
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