xenia

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clowninround

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
May 13, 2004
Messages
867
Location
Kissimmee FL
I just don't understand it. I have a toadstool, mushrooms, paly's, zoo's, a bubble coral, capnella, gorgonians, star polyps, a flowerpot, wood's polyps, yellow polyps, ricordia, ect and they are all doing fine. But I got a frag of xenia a few months back and it never pulsed, still alive and growing, no pulsing. So I aquired a much larger piece of xenia and they are falling off (the polyps). Here is my water chem:
ammonia 0
nitrate 4
nitrite 0
cal 390-400
alk between normal and high (need a more specific test)
ph 8.4 (end of lighting cycle)
sg 1.023
temp 80

What next? :cry:

TIA
 
aww man... Their polyps are falling off?? That is a very very bad sign :cry: My xenia recovered from dieing, and I found out alk is very important in keeping xenia. My one colony melted off and polyps fell, But I am lucky this one hanged on and is doing great, all it need is to regrow back its feathers and its basically healed!!! 8O
 
:cry: I am doing a 10% water change in about an hour. I checked my cal again this morning after dosing last night and it is up to 420 if that makes any difference. I am going to check it again after the w/c to see where I stand, along with all my other parameters. Is there anything else I can do?
 
With alk at the higher range and your Ca at 420 ppm, your chem is not the issue. Keep doing the water changes to ensure DOC is low and water quality remains high. You might try adding a liquid marine vitamin high in vitamin C like Zoe or Vita-chem which can sometimes help ailing corals.

With the tips missing, I would also suspect a predator. Either a fish or some other creature. Might not be a bad idea to do some night diving. If it's not an unseen hitchiker, I'd suspect the peppermints.

Cheers
Steve
 
I also saw the emerald crabs on that rock, as well as the peppermints. The stalks are upright and look healthy (it's just the polyps), so that might be the case. Thing is, I have another type of xenia in the tank and they don't even notice it. I have some zoe, I will add that in now.
 
Two things. I did my w/c and then I caught one of my emarald crabs in the act of shredding one of my mushrooms. My corals took a beating. quite a few of my mushrooms have huge chunks missing :x and my wood's polyps have some feathers missing (but not enough to notice). Hope I didn't convict the wrong man though cuz I saw one of my peppermints clawing at a mushroom too...but I am gonna wait it out now that the crabs are gone. Since I took em out even the torn mushrooms came out, so maybe thats the end of it. Also the cool part about it is that every mushroom he/they left the mouths untouched, so everything should grow back. It's funny cuz it just happened all at once. First the xenia, then the mushrooms then the woods polyps.
 
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