Frag dying colony?

[fizzlefish]

Hey everyone. A few months ago with wedding planning and career change i fell out of the hobby and my tank went into autonomous mode meaning. I fed the fish, added kalk water to ATO, emptied skimmer and occasional water changes. As you can imagine my tank looks a bit run down now. Algae, cyno, and all the goodies that come with neglect. I am hating myself for it but now i'm married and i can pay more attention to my tank again. I did not lose much in the way of corals. A single head of torch from falling face down into my zoas and that is really it. Recently my birdnest has taken a turn and has large white dead patches with other areas looking healthy. I fault this to my ATO full of kalk and sometimes dumping a ton of kalk water into the sump shooting the PH to 8.43+ at night. I decided to stop using kalk since i have a surplus of 2 part and will start dosing when i need it. As for the birdnest I was wondering if i should frag off the good portions or leave the colony to recover? Sorry for the paragraph of text to ask a simple question.

[MondoBongo]

hmm, tough call. i would probably go with leaving the colony whole rather than fragging it. you might end up stressing it more if you try to frag, but i could be swayed.

aside from the kalk you actually might want to check your nitrates. i've had a lot of problems keeping various types of birdsnest over the years, and i am starting to suspect that was because of the high nitrate levels in my old tank. it always seemed to do OK for a while, but as soon as the slightest bit of stress happened, in one case a temp spike, it went south in a hurry.

[fizzlefish]

hmm, tough call. i would probably go with leaving the colony whole rather than fragging it. you might end up stressing it more if you try to frag, but i could be swayed.

aside from the kalk you actually might want to check your nitrates. i've had a lot of problems keeping various types of birdsnest over the years, and i am starting to suspect that was because of the high nitrate levels in my old tank. it always seemed to do OK for a while, but as soon as the slightest bit of stress happened, in one case a temp spike, it went south in a hurry.

Thanks Mondo. I will leave it be and continue to get all my levels back to where they should be. My nitrates have been a bit high but i have done a series of water changes in hopes to lower them again. I used to dose vodka and the tank thrived until i started to forget every now and then. Might start doing that again.