xenia melting???

Hey Everyone,

So I woke up this morning to see my xenia looking like it is starting to melt. Yesterday it looked great. It is actually spreading to other rocks within the tank! The only thing different from this time yesterday is I added a new powerhead to increase flow in the tank (not pointed at the xenia at all) and I dosed the tank with 3ml of Kent Marine, Marine C for a tang that had some spots.

Parameters are as follows:

PH - 8.3
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrates - 5.0
Calcium - 540
KH - 179
Temp - 80
Salinity 1.021 (clearly need to take this up slowly.)

Any ideas???? All other corals look fine!

 

This happened to me when I added flow, They shrunk to 1/3 of their normal size. they looked like pygmy xenia.. As long as their heads don't fall off, the flow might have irritated or damaged them. In a week mine were back to normal.. Now they're in even higher flow and they're fine. Givem time.. htey're very resilient.. post some pics if you can.

 

BTW get your nitrates down! Waterchange.. if your using filter pads changem out every 3-5 days

 

i have had some to shrink up and just go away but never melt. sorry i cant help you but i hope they come back for you. maybe someone else will chime in and have the right awnsers

 

What type of Xenia are we talking about? Pulsating variety or no?

 

ur nitrates arent too bad at all. 5.0 ppm? thats nothing. keep an eye on the xenia though pull them out if needed.

 

Not bad 20ppm or under, but there's no reason for them to not be at 0, imo.

 

I turned the new power head off to see if that would help them. I'm attaching some pics. Three of what the xenia look like now and then another one of the tank so you can see how big they used to be.

 

It is Pulsating Xenia.

 

believe it or not pulsating xenia can stand high nitrates because it gets its nutrients from absorbing the water and your nitrates are fine there are allot of people that have successive reef tanks that have a constant 10 to 20 ppm of nitrates.if you google it there are alot of informative pages on them.