Xenia Withering Away?

[Pennies2Cents]

Hi all,

We have this problem with our Xennia. It seems to look like it is withering away slowly.. Any ideas why?

Nitrate,Nitrite,Amonia are at (0)
Alk is 8.2
Salinity is 1.026

Lighting is a PC with 2 lunar & 2 Actinic on a 12 hour shifting timer...


I did a water change didnt help much..

Let me know what you thinK>..

[RayAllen]

Something you will want to know about Xenia. Some people can get it to grow like weeds and can loose control of it. Some are like myself who have the great water chemistry and it wont grow at all and dies. You unfortunatley are probably the latter, but many succsessfull reef keepers have just as much trouble keeping it a live.

[mattymalcolm]

In my experience the silver and brown waiving hand xenia does better under mh lighting and the small pulsing does better under pc lighting.

[LoneStar]

Zenia like 'dirty' water.

[Fish4life]

Check TDS from top off water and alk levels. IMO high TDS and low alk will result in the loss. My pink pom pom zenia grows like a weed and i'd like to believe that my water is 'clean'.

Hope that helps!

Kurt

[ErikH]

"IMO high TDS and low alk will result in the loss."

yup.

[alton]

If your Nitrates are at 0 then that is the reason. Lonestar was correct. I have grown xenia in 2 watts per gallon using PC's and under 3-250w MH with the same outcome too much Xenia. But when I sold a bunch of fish out of my 200 and the Nitrate went to 0 so did the Xenia it all crashed and burned. Maybe Richard will post on here what he told me to add to get my nitrates up a little.

[dustint21]

Is the water temp high or low?

[the CL poster]

strange. most people WANT to erradicate their xenia population....

with your issue, make sure all water parameters check out, like ALK...

[Pennies2Cents]

Water Temp is at 79. I forgot to mention it is a Pulsating Zennia.

[ErikH]

ture true about the clean water. I can't grow xenia at all either. I don't have any alk swings either.

[Pennies2Cents]

alright, so is this a good thing or a bad thing? When we first started this saltwater thing Mr. Pulsating Zennia was doing great.. Now that its been a while since we started and the tank has been running its not doing so good. I just dont know what to do...Im gonna go have the water tested at the fish store tomorrow maybe they can give me a little more detail as to what is going on...

[seatrueblue]

My xenias tend to start to wither away when I haven't been dosing my tank with magnesium. Try that and 10% weekly water changes. Also try to make sure the tank doesn't get any warmer than 78F. Usually after a week or two of doing this..they perk right back up.

[Pennies2Cents]

Okay so here what i am going to do...

Treatment of Fiji Gold everyother day..
Kent CB Parts A & B everday.

Hopefully this helps.. Im keeping my fingers crossed.

[Bill S]

Xenia grows GREAT in my 55. Withers in my 215. The 215 has nitrates AND high magnesium...

[ErikH]

Are you using an ATO yet? If so, you should just dose Kalkwasser (limewater) at night after your lights go off. That's when there is a swing in your levels and by doing that it will keep them from doing so.

[Pennies2Cents]

SAD NEWS!

Mr. Xenia died! Our first coral frag, :( I did a water change last night to no avail he was gone.. I just cant figure it out.. It has just split in 2 with lots of little babies undernieth.. I will try again..Im going to empty out the tank and set it up again, I know it sounds crazy, but when I was taking him out of the tank he started letting out some brown stuff all other life started to act funny, now every body is not happy.. I will keep you updated...

[p00num3lli]

sorry about the loss, but yea exenia likes "dirty" water. my exinia is fine, i dont have a skimmer, so im sure my water isnt very clean^.^.... im ordering a skimmer today, so im nevouse about what that will do to my exenia >.<

[Pennies2Cents]

we have a skimmer, but its not on all the time... I hope everything goes good when you put yours in..

[ErikH]

xenia will crash and burn, and it can crash your tank. Try some zoa polyps.

[Pennies2Cents]

I think I know what you mean by "crashing the tank" ever since it started dying everthing else started act up.. Now that its no longer in there dying everyone opened up & I did a 25% water change..I think that this is so funny, we have some zoa's but I think I may be allergic, everytime I put my hand in the tank and accidently touch them I always get dizzy and nausious. Not so funny feeling

[MKCindy]

I melted my Xenia not once, but twice. I'm a slow learner. I didn't mix my Kalkwasser very well. When I added it to the tank small particles landed on the xenias. Once the melt down started nothing I did helped, however, a few weeks later the Pom Pom grew back in a live rock crevice.

[drgnbttrfly]

I think xenia is responsible for my tank crash yesterday....

wear gloves when handling critters in your tank...even if you get water in em...it protects your skin from stingers

they have shoulder gloves...but you can always wear kitchen gloves till you can do otherwise

[Pennies2Cents]

Geez, Im sure that yours is alot better looking than mine, since we just started in November of last year.. I hope everything is alright now i your tank, Now that the xenia is all gone everyone is happy in mine.. Thank goodness, I will start doing that, cause that dizzy feeling is not a very good one..

[drgnbttrfly]

I was reading one of those library posts about the stuff we can catch...and I busted out the gloves...and I wash extra extra careful when I am done....

And to think I had been bare knucklin it since I had my first tank as a little kid...whew!

ewwwwwww

Yeah it might be like a bee sting for ya...and the more you get exposed you can actually become hypersensitive to it.

I am careful not to touch my anemones if I can help it. I babysat a sebae for someone though...and I had contact with it a couple times and ugh...I know the feeling you describe. My BTAs dont do that but I try to make an effort not to let them touch my skin at all.

[barderer]

Xenia does not like "dirty" water it likes water with a high levels of digestible nutrients in it like many other corals. You still want to keep your nitrates etc. low. Also it does seem to do fine in clean and truly dirty water :) :)