Frogspawn Stem Deteriorating?

So I have been slowly watching my frogspawn break apart a little each week now and it's been bugging me. I saw nothing eating it, no fish were nipping it, I even stayed up late nights to see if something was having a midnight snack.

But, as it seemed like nothing was going to reveal itself, I found a funny looking isopod on my glass that prompted me to look up flatworm pics. To make a long story short, as I'm staring at my dying FS stem, I see several small flatworms crawling around the "tubes" on the top, and decided that being this late in the game, I would try a fresh water dip. Got 5 worms off the head and none have returned. Some threads stated the coral would have an adverse reaction to a dip, but 2 days now and it's coming back around.
From the pic above, can anyone tell if the flat worms were the reason for the stem falling apart like that, or is there something else I need to focus on?

PH- 8.2
Nitrate- .25
Nitrite- 0
Ammo- 0
Cal- 430
Alk- 10.5
PHo- .10
Mag- uncertain

Salifert kits

 

bumpitybump

 

last try, lol. I'm lost with this stem pealing thing. Thanks up front for any help.

 

Well first thing is your frog spawn looks very unhealthy and unhappy that said,
I had a crab in my old tank that was picking at my candy cane stem like that it was wierd. Hth

 

Well, after looking up a few things, a lot of folks have said that the stem is just a skeleton and doesn't regrow. That being said, upon giving the coral a FW dip and witnessing the worms fall off, and not seeing any more come back, the head looks noticeably better from before. Being on it was on it's last leg so to say, any improvement is good from this point on. If anybody was wondering, the coral didn't have any problems after the FW dip. About 8-10 minutes with some shaking around to release the flat worms was all it took.
I'm not out of the hole yet, but things are looking up.

before

after

 

Update......Just for those who are curious......The FW dip really helped.

 

Looks much much better now . Good work !

 

I know Right!! I've been very pleased.

 

Actually I am pretty surprised.

Great job.

 

How do you do a fw dip and how do you think it helped? I might wanna try