Xenia ~ what makes it thrive?

hmm... my xenia is growing like crazy in pristine water... and in another tank which i dont really pay attention to, its growing a lot slower.

 

excited xenia is finally growing in my tank again. im now wondering if the leathers were the problem? since they have all been removed and the test xenia frag i placed in is doing well

 

Glad its growing for you again. It was interesting reading this thread and seeing everyones different experiences with xenia. Xenia was probably going to be one of my first corals I was going to try along with zoas and shrooms. I'm curious as to how many 3reefers have luck with it pulsing like this ‪Pulsing Xenia Coral in my BioCube29 Nano-Reef Aquarium‬‏ - YouTube

 

mine is pulsing like that . i believe that's one of the pom pom xenia types. its what i have. i also bought a red sea frag, at least that's what they called it at the store. it has stripes on its petals, but does seem to pulse as much.
i love the pom poms

 

I've always heard that xenia ships very poorly. Your best bet, IMO, from my experience propagating xenia, is if you can find local xenia that has already attached to a rock, and carefully put it in your tank.

Or - if you have to have it shipped, I would bet that it would fare better if it were a lone clump of xenia that was scraped off glass, so it wouldn't get crushed in shipping.

 

I love xenia! It was one of my first favorites, and still is. It's the only coral I've ever seen that moves on it's own, without the help of the flow.

I've had it in my tank for about a year now, growing and pulsing. (I have a video in my build thread.) It's not in plague proportions, but I do keep it trimmed. I have a 90 gallon tank w/ 35 gallon sump, skimmer rated for 150 gallons, I run GFO and carbon. One thing I've learned that really helped me keep my last (and final) frag of xenia alive when I put it in the tank: xenia loves iodine. Give it a good strong dip before putting it into the tank. Also, low flow and it will be happy!

 

i agree, i now have 2 types of xenia in my tank, its going nuts. not sure why it took a dive and i couldn't grow it for a while.

 

xenia grows slow for me but my sps grows fairly fast. i have heard that it thrives off of phosphates in the water so i recently took off the gfo from my system and have added some cheato to hopefully grow both

 

won't your sps brown out if you remove the gfo?

 

I'll share my observations of xenia over the last year...

Xenia was the first coral in my tank, which was started in June 2011. It thrived until November. In that time it had actually begun to be a problem in the tank as it was dividing very quickly, covering every surface, and almost always moving up the rock work towards the light (where unfortunately my SPS is). While the xenia was healthy it had a light purple color and pulsed a lot.

For some reason in late October/early November the xenia very quickly declined. It seemed to lose the "feathers" of its tentacles first and then turned a dark purple. Within a month it was shriveled up. I cut away most of in December and discarded it.

Recently, starting in late January the remaining xenia in my tank started to look better. The color returned to the healthy light purple color and the feathers are growing back. It is also pulsing again. I expect it will fully rebound.

These are the potential causes I have considered, with my own opinions on them.

1) The xenia declined since my tank was too nutrient poor. I was only feeding my tank once a day, had an over sized skimmer, and was using GFO. While I still have the same skimmer and GFO, over the last couple of months I have started feeding the tank a lot more (now 4x per day). In my opinion, this is the most likely explanation. Xenia do not seem to do well if a tank is both nutrient poor and under fed. I think they can do well in a nutrient poor tank that is fed a lot (my tank has ~3 ppm nitrate and 0.00 ppm phosphate, but is now fed frequently).

2) I added a Vortech MP10 to my tank (50 gallon) in October, increasing the flow in my tank. This date roughly corresponds to the decline of my xenia so I cannot discount it. It is possible that the remaining xenia in the tank have now begun to adapt to the higher flow rate, allowing it to rebound.

3) I switched salts in October from Kent Marine to Reef Crystals. It's possible the xenia did not like the change, but other corals in my tank did not seem to react. I don't think this is likely.

4) I switched from Kent Marine carbon to BRS carbon in January. Kent Marine carbon was recently recalled, although apparently the batch I was using was OK. Again, the other corals in my tank did not seem to react to the change, so I don't think this is a likely explanation.