Question about Frogspawn/hammer coral.

[MrManz1691]

i got up this morning and noticed that one of the heads of my frog spawn had "dropped" off of the body. It is laying on the floor of the tank. it is fully open but not attached to the calcium base anymore. Anyone know why that might happen or what i shoudl do about the head that dropped off?

-Andrew

 

[tuberider]

I've seen it happen before, it's a "bail out" sometimes it is caused by stress, sometimes it just happens.

If you wanna save the little guy, take a short section of PVC place the coral in it and wrap with bridal veil. Make sure it gets a little light and some flow (especially a little flow to prevent protozoal and bacterial infections). Sit back and be patient, it takes them a little while to form a skeleton.

HTH

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Is your alk or Mg on the low side?

Polyps can bail if the coral has problems laying down new skeleton.

 

[MrManz1691]

So I took the head and did what you said. I don't know why it just dropped. I checked my water and the calcium was low at around 300ppm and the salinity was high at 1.028. I think this was due to my kalkwasser being down for the last three weeks. Do you think either of those changes would cause a head to drop?

 

[Mr. Ugly]

More likely that alk dropped too low after 3 weeks of no kalk.

Calcium is not as critical. It's in excess relative to alk.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Would be good to dose some 2-part, or at least baking soda, or else a bunch of water changes until you get your kalk back on line.

http://jdieck1.home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chemcalc.html