xenia, like most coral seem to pulse faster under brighter light, 9 +
dkh and like most corals will begin to retard and if left unchecked, die should
po4 and/or nitrates become too high. In my personal experience, kicked off by 1 lousy BTA croaking in my tank, high
po4 (Anything above .01 (some say .05)
ppm) will cause all corals to start a slow descent ending in bleached out coral. Its freaky really, one day your wondering why the xenia isnt pulsing like it used to and the next month its starting to bleach and shrink faster than you can water change. While to some extent, xenia can be happy in higher nutrient areas (higher
po4 and nitrate areas) consider that any coral in a closed system exposed to
po4 levels running in the .05 or more range are fair game for bleaching or overall poor health. It took me a long time to pony up the $$ for a salifert
po4 test kit, now I test once a week. (And run RowaPhos). All that aside, with proper parameters, you will find xenia is a weed and in my case (before that @#$% BTA) I was removing about 1 cup of xenia / month..Very cool problem to have ; )
GL!
