Frogspawn Issue

I have had a branching frogspawn with two heads for the past month or so. It has done nicely until a few days ago. one of the heads is no longer fully expanding. I noticed it Sunday morning that the one head was beginning to fill up while the other was staying shriveledlike it does during the night. Since then it has never fully expanded like the other head. I just checked all params last night. I am going to do a water change in the next few days last one was done a little over a week ago. I am going to attach a pic of what it looked like before, you can see the lower head fully expanded as now it is half that size but the one on top is still fully expanded. I have not changed my flow, it sits midway in the tank under 2-10k 56 watt PCF, and 2- actinic. Bulbs are about 5 months old. No other corals are showing any signs of stress. zoas, bubble, other frogspawn, mushrooms, xenia, anthelia, gsp, yellow star polyps, fish - 2 clowns, kole tang, starry blenny, scooter, dragon goby, 2 firefish, several hermits, snails,

params and tank
55 gal, reef mostly soft and lps
sg 1.025
ph 8.2
temp 78
nitrite 0
ammonia 0
nitrate 5
phos .25
mg 1260
alk 7.7 dkh
calc 330

thanks in advance for your advice.
Rob

 

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t486/rsjakp/2012-03-29_20-23-48_200.jpg

 

From the look of the polyps in the picture you only have one direction flow... Am I correct? Frogspawn, hammer and torch will sometimes do polyp bail out, or just die if left in a one direction flow for too long. They like more of a low turbulant flow. In my opinion all corals should have a turbulant flow. In the ocean the flow isn't just one direction all the time, it constantly changes. My spawn did a similar thing and once I got a low turbulant flow by colliding the flow from my power head with the flow from my canister filter it perked right up and then startee splitting like crazy! Try that to see if that head perks up at all.

 

ok I will try that when I get home today. is there anything else it could be?

 

Bring your mag up and see if your Ca and alk come up with it.

 

What would you suggest for raising Mag Corraline?

 

what level do you like to keep yours?

 

I would slowly bring it up to 1350 and then see where your Ca and alk stand. Alk issues and swings are detrimental to LPS in my experience. It can not hurt to bring the big 3 up to and keep consistently better values. While you are not far off on those values I do not see the harm in adjusting them slowly.

Reef Aquarium Water Parameters by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

I keep mine around 1400-1500 but only for algae reasons.

 

ok thanks algae is something I have not had an issue with. With my current corals would you think that water changes should keep the big three levels up instead of dosing? also do you use epsom salts for your mag maintenance?

 

I have never used Epsom salts. I have always used Kent MarineTech Mag.

When a water change will achieve the same goal as dosing I am always on the water change solution rather than dosing.

It all depends on your baselines and utilization of the big 3 though, so speculation is just that speculation.