pulsing xenia

[sansouci01]

I have pink pulsing xenia growing in my 2 1/2 gallon that I hardly take care of (just an emerald crab living in it) The things are growing like weeds. I fragged a piece and put it in my 34 gallon tank and the thing is barely hanging on. Is it true that they grow better in dirtier water? The water is the same in both tanks. When I do water changes, it comes from the same mix so I imagine the parameters are the same. I've tried different spots in the tank but with the same results.

[Mr tap water]

Hi there
I found Xenia can be very temperamental, can grow like weed in some peoples tanks and just don't grow in others. As for water quality I believe it's the opposite and like cleaner water as most of the nutrients come from photosynthesising.


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[Marty.h]

I had similar with my dad's tank xenia would grow absolutely fine in mine yet put some in my dad's and it just melted away yet I done all his water and everything just one of them strange ones and no one really knows why.

As our parameters matched but still died in his.

[sansouci01]

Here's the xenia in my small tank
well..the video doesn't want to work

[Gregcoyote]

There are several potential reasons a octocoral like Xenia will fail.

This species is commonly used to export nitrates in some systems. They like nitrate. Scrub the water to SPS standards and Xenia colony can fail, or slows down growth significantly.

It hates temperature spikes. It can set off a entire colony failure.

Some colonies seem to have a time limit built in. They get so big, then die back. This die back can be triggered by any number of events.

Lots of soft corals do this "cycle" thing as a result of sometimes tiny changes. One of the challenges in having SPS and hard corals in the same system is this difference in nitrogen levels. JMO




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[keegster803]

It's probably lack of nitrates, I know a lady that works at the Indy zoo who constantly scrapes the crap off the back of some of the tanks and just throws it away


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[sansouci01]

Might be the nitrates. My small tank has 5ppm nitrates and my big tank has .02ppm

[Marty.h]

Mine was fine in low nutrient with SPS however I removed the pulse as it was taking up SPS real estate.

[navaljonf]

I could never get them to grow in my tank but other coral like leathers and mushrooms do great


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[All_fish]

I've had my Xenia for about 2 weeks under what could be considered as minimal light (via t5) and I've seen significant growth. My water quality is decent but not amazing. As said before it grows a lot in some peoples tanks and just doesn't in others.