Frogspawn behavior and appearance

[MrMreef]

Hey Everyone!

New tank (Reefer 425xl, 2 Months in with dry rocks and KZ’s Zeovit method) with most parameters shakily in “normal” (sal 35.8ppm @26.2C/79-ish-F, pH 7.95-8.05, dKH 7.0-7.5, nitrates currently 5ppm and phosphates spiking up at 0.2ppm)

Tank is extremely lightly stocked - currently there are 2 clownfish and a mix of soft, LPS and some Monti cap.

2 issues have popped up:

- one Frogspawn w 2 heads is producing black debris that is sticking to it, although the mouths are staying closed and they mostly have pretty good extension. This has been going on for the last 5 days or so - I’ve been blowing it away with a Pipette. As of today the Frogspawn is pulling in a bit but not exposing any skeleton. Is this just happy coral poop or something s

- a second frogspawn frag underneath this one keeps throwing out sweeper tentacles in its direction. They touch the other one but don’t stick and they polyps don’t appear to react to each other. Is this normal behavior? I though Frogspawn wasn’t so aggressive…

Pics below under cold white light - thanks for your input!

 

[i cant think]

Hey Everyone!

New tank (Reefer 425xl, 2 Months in with dry rocks and KZ’s Zeovit method) with most parameters shakily in “normal” (sal 35.8ppm @26.2C/79-ish-F, pH 7.95-8.05, dKH 7.0-7.5, nitrates currently 5ppm and phosphates spiking up at 0.2ppm)

Tank is extremely lightly stocked - currently there are 2 clownfish and a mix of soft, LPS and some Monti cap.

2 issues have popped up:

- one Frogspawn w 2 heads is producing black debris that is sticking to it, although the mouths are staying closed and they mostly have pretty good extension. This has been going on for the last 5 days or so - I’ve been blowing it away with a Pipette. As of today the Frogspawn is pulling in a bit but not exposing any skeleton. Is this just happy coral poop or something s

- a second frogspawn frag underneath this one keeps throwing out sweeper tentacles in its direction. They touch the other one but don’t stick and they polyps don’t appear to react to each other. Is this normal behavior? I though Frogspawn wasn’t so aggressive…

Pics below under cold white light - thanks for your input!

Frogspawns will touch eachother but won’t sting eachother, as for the first issue I honestly don’t know

 

[Shirak]

How long have you had them? The one that's higher up looks a bit pale. How much light are they getting? With the lightly stocked tank do you target feed them? My LPS like to catch bits of mysis and lps pellets. They do much better with food bits a couple times a week.

 

[MrMreef]

How long have you had them? The one that's higher up looks a bit pale. How much light are they getting? With the lightly stocked tank do you target feed them? My LPS like to catch bits of mysis and lps pellets. They do much better with food bits a couple times a week.

The pale one 3 weeks and the green tipped one 1 week, I’m broadcast feeding TM Aminos (~5ml), Zoo and phyto (1ml alternating) every other day to keep the nutrients up and over feeding the clowns at about 1 Artemis cube per day…

They don’t seem to ever “stick” the artemis (I watch to see where it goes and it does fly into them) so I’m not sure if they’re getting anything from it.

Light wise I think they’re at 70-90 par up from 40 when I acclimatized them - but that’s a good point, I’ll check. Lighting is 2x G5 XR15 Pros.

Thanks for the questions!

 

[MrMreef]

Here’s the sweepers out (edit: the top FS is a little withdrawn because I cleaned the stuff off it):

 

[MrMreef]

They’re at 80 PAR!

 

[i cant think]

What flow are they at?

 

[Shirak]

Huh That's weird but it does look like they are fighting a bit.
I find when I feed my frogspawn/octospawn/hammers they need most of the circulation pumps turned off for 30min or so. Sounds like your feeding tiny things and liquid. If you have any fish food pellets or frozen mysis you can try that.

What are you using to measure your parameters? 5 nitrates is fine. phosphates are getting on the high side but not terrible. I have had mine at .3 in the past and the LPS were fine as can be. 80par is fine too.

My personal thought is they would like some bits of meaty chunky food occasionally. And maybe you need to separate them?.. I would also bump up the alk a bit but that could be from the salt. I prefer my alk in the 8.5-9 range.

 

[MrMreef]

What flow are they at?

As a beginner it’s hard to say - 2 Tunze 6055’s in the corner on 4 second 80% on-off pulse mode; they move a fair bit but aren’t blasted

 

[MrMreef]

Huh That's weird but it does look like they are fighting a bit.
I find when I feed my frogspawn/octospawn/hammers they need most of the circulation pumps turned off for 30min or so. Sounds like your feeding tiny things and liquid. If you have any fish food pellets or frozen mysis you can try that.

What are you using to measure your parameters? 5 nitrates is fine. phosphates are getting on the high side but not terrible. I have had mine at .3 in the past and the LPS were fine as can be. 80par is fine too.

My personal thought is they would like some bits of meaty chunky food occasionally. And maybe you need to separate them?.. I would also bump up the alk a bit but that could be from the salt. I prefer my alk in the 8.5-9 range.

Great points, will separate them and see what happens and wanted to hit 8 alk anyway - aggression would be really weird, though, right?

Salt is FM Reef Pro for the record (so normal dKH reads ~6.8 with the hanna, been bumping it up slowly)

 

[MrMreef]

Update on this:

- separated the Frogspawns with no real effect on its behaviour; the black/green is still sweeping like crazy from just one side

- Increased flow to no observable effect (no contraction anyway)

- paler frogspawn is still pumping out the black stuff from both heads but otherwise looks good

- neither is really “eating”; tried target feeding with mysis

- Params have changed due to some Coral Snow and A4R dosing: dKH is up to 7.8 and phos is down to 0.03, nitrates at 5

Will give an update in a week to try and close this out! Thanks for your help!