GSP, Torch, and Button Polyp Q's

[Blind Tree Frog]

Alright, first the easy one.

 

 

I've got a strip of GSP that I can't quite figure out where I want in my tank, plus it's an odd shape (like a mat of fingers) so it's hard to place. So I'm hesitant to lock it into a place until I'm sure. The question is, how long will it take before it starts to join onto a rock or sand on it's own?

 

The harder q. Perhaps I jumped in over my head, but I picked up a brown torch coral frag. It looked a little poor, but it was only 10 bucks. One head looked fine, one had some gunk in it (I assume dead softie stuff), one had some tentacles in it, one empty and one sbroken open. It was suffieciently healthy looking that I thought i would be fine though. I placed it in a spot with high flow and moderate lighting (high lighting all over my tank, but it's in the shade, so it should be good). I sucked the gunk out of one head fearing that if it was dead I didn't want it messing up the tank. My tank conditions seem to be pretty good, save one frag from FragPack.com everything opens up and looks good within an hour. The two heads with tentacles seemed to be pretty good in my tank so I think they'll be fine. Questions are, will the empty heads start to grow again at all, or are they dead for good (if so, I'll just frag off the two good heads and replant it later)? Also, anything I should do special to help it pick up? I already tend to go with a weekly water change of 0.4~1 gallon of water. I don't douse with anything, but I'm thinking of adding some supplements now as I've got the torch and an open brain I'm trying to make happy.

 

 

 

While I'm writing out an excessively long post.... I've got a colony of neon green button polyps that I've had since my tank finsihed cylcing. Recently, half of the polyps see to be closing up. the only thing noticable is that the algae on the rock is getting a better hold of it, but the algea seems to be worse on the side where the polyps are doing fine. I'm going to add some more hermit crabs to help cut down on the algae but is there anything else that I should consider doing? Picking off the aglae by hand seems to be an excercise in futility. Also, the flow where it was was the point of highest flow in my tank, so I've also moved the rock to a lower flow position. I'll try to get a picture of the proble tommorrow

[Blind Tree Frog]

pic of the poor polyps

[Blind Tree Frog]

Came in today. More of the polyps are closed up now, and those that have been closed up the longest have little white bugs running all over them (Pods?)

 

I have no idea what do to here. I'm going to drop a snail on the rock and hope he eats a lot of the algae next.

[Blind Tree Frog]

Snail didn't seem to like it there. I blew of the debris on the rcok. Some of the ones that closed early are not white and hollow... I guess the rock is dying. I wonder why.

[Blind Tree Frog]

no help at all? bummer

[Blind Tree Frog]

Oh well.... The rock is looking worse and worse. i guess it is dying. Odd though, everything else seems to be doing well (Except the open brain that doesn't seem to be doing anything and the polyps from fragpacks that haven't opened at all and are probably dead.)