Frogspawn won't open?

might be a dumb question , but what did it look like at your lfs? like it is now or fully extended? any idea what they have their sg at?

 

Dunno what their SG is at but in the LFS is was fully extended, very healthy and beautiful looking...

 

what? you mean nitrites i hope.

 

Yeah, that's what I thought too... I have zero nitrites, but low nitrAtes.

 

No, I mean nitrates. If the tank is only 5 weeks old and you've got nitrates, it's not finished cycling.

 

where does it say that the tank is 5 weeks old? in my tank my frogspawn does fine with low nitrates (10-20) and will even tolerater higher levels of po4 (.35ppm)

 

It's true, the tank is only 5 weeks old

My clowns are doing well, I'm getting purple coralline algae, my inverts are doing well, and I've been getting zero readings for 2.5 weeks... I figured it was done cycling. It's stocked with 30lbs healthy live rock.

 

OK, now I'm confused. First you said that you had 5.0 nitrates but now you're saying that you have been getting zero readings for 2.5 weeks. Did you start getting nitrates again as a result of adding fish or something?

 

my frogspawn experiences

if you touch its flesh with your flesh, it dies (or will come close to it). I wear rubber gloves now.

mine hated any light... would barely open. It is now in complete shade getting no direct light and is the biggest I've ever seen it.


it hates pretty much any flow above the breath of my voice. I had a torch that was in low/moderate flow and that tore the flesh right off the skeleton (it took long enough that I should have realized what was going on but I didn't... noob me). The frog behaves similarly IME.

For me, I didn't put anything other than softies in my tank before several months had passed.


Acclimating for x amount of time or whatever is fine, but really, IME, it's better to measure the SG of the shipping bag and keep acclimating the way you describe until its SG matches that of your DT. YAY refractometer for the win (can't measure shipping bag SG with a hydrometer as there isn't enough water generally to do this while keeping coral submerged).



I think your likely problems are (pick one or a combination (probably a combo)):

• you didn't acclimate to matching SG
• tank is too new (i.e. param issues)
• too much flow (probable IME)
• you touched it
• too much light (maybe... I'm torn on where I stand with this when it comes to Frogspawns)
• Hasn't been in tank long enough... but I would expect it to look better than those pics within a few hours as mission said, IME.

good luck


A little comment on being done with cycling and having nitrates...

0 nitrates says completed cycle... sure. But most softies don't give a hoot if your nitrates are under 20-40. So cycle is done 'enough' for some zoa's, mushrooms, colt, something like that and the majority of fish you see in the hobby.

My tank cycled in weeks... but the nitrate piece took months and months... I waited until that 0'd out before I started adding LPS.


So, yes, you need 0 nitrates to say you're all done... but I'm sure you see lots of posts from folks who are "done" but still have like 20 nitrates... That's probably the thinking when they claim "done"... they can start adding some things to the tank...

ok, enough of my rambling... back to work.

 

Yes amcarrig, I had all zeros about a week ago, but since have added a clown pair that made it go up a little.

Thanks for the advice peredhil (and everyone else), I appreciate it.