Pom Pom Xenia

NW Houston area. Tomball. This guy should be giving it up pretty cheap or free from the sounds of it. Says he's got some "mushrooms, anthelia and a few other things to get you started. "

So I'm excited. I will post pics when I get some.

 

My first attempt at Xenia failed. It was the brown kind that looked like this.


It eventually just started withering away to nothing. Adding iodine did nothing to bring it back. The arrows in this picture point to what was left after several months.


After a couple of months I tried again. and purchased a small white pom pom xenia frag. It quickly split and then it too started to wither away starting first with shrinking polyps.


I found out that my nitrate was high at 20 mg/L. I did lots of water changes to reduce my nitrate level to between 5 and 10 ppm. At that point they started growing again and began pulsing again too.

My nitrate level is now almost undectable and they are gowing like weeds and pulsing like crazy. I'm afraid they will begin to overtank my tank unless I thin them out.I ran out of iodine a couple of months ago. I never started dosing again because the Xenia didn't seem to care. I have noticed that they pulse faster with more light.

So what is the moral of this long winded story?
1. Keep your nitrates low.
2. If at first you don't succeed ....
3. Be careful what you wish for.

 

Pom Poms are much prettier than brown xenia! The are very very hardy, and it's really hard to kill them. I fragged mine, and then they were massively trampled by Turbo snails while I was getting them to attatch to gravel. They got beat up bad! A week later they bounced back as beautiful as ever. I have never had a nitrate problem in my tank or any detectable at that matter. So they don't need higher nitrate levels. They do like low to med flow, and love light.

 

I dont consider 20 ppm to be high, more like average. besides which Xenia actually does better in tanks with Nitrates. Its more likely you had something else that was killing it - perhaps phosphates?

 

Got some pics.

This is the tank he will be fragging from.







And this is the Pom Pom he will be fragging for me

 

My Nitrates have been dropping. They dropped to and held at 20 for a while but then dropped to 10 and my last test looks like it's 5.

I have algae (only) on my powerheads. I plan on taking those out and cleaning them this weekend. I'm curious to see what this does with the Nitrates.

 

I agree, I kinda wish I had not bought my brown tip ones. They're cool, but the Pom pom is much brighter and prettier.

 

No one knows why Xenia pulse, we can only assume.. I agree people over think them.. they are like the weeds of coral! The Pom Poms are beautiful though, and they're everyone's (my family) favorite. Then I have to joke around and call them weeds, and when I'm gonna deweed my tank...