Xenia Frag

[Dorkel Marine 1]

Hi everyone. I purchased a xenia(pulsating) from Wendall about 4-5 months ago. It was doing ok until it took a few drops because of crabs in a row. I found the xenia upside down way in the back. It was quite an ordeal to retrieve him and maybe I hurt it. Now in retrospect I would glue or secure the frag better. Ever since the last fall the frag has not been doing well. The water has not changed at all. I've put it in a few different places but no change. Now I'm just thinking about adding kalk and monitoring calcium, iodine and magnesium plus keeping the alk at a certain level. Maybe because these level's haven't been checked or changed the xenias requirements haven't been met. The other corals I have are mushrooms, a colt frag and a greem star polyp frag. They are all doing fine. Do xenia have certain requirements. I read how they are viewed as weeds but maybe they are weeds in a certain environment. I'd like to know because eventually I do want some xenia. My goal now is to check the parameters pertaining to alk and calcium. don't get me wrong. my ph is steady at 8.3. There are next to no nitrates. A skimmer is now working on my tank. The salinity is at 1.025 and temp is approx 82 to 84. Is the temp to high. I read an article that said this was the average temp in the oceans where all our creatures come from.

[Troy F]

A lot of people have observed declines in the health of their xenia colony with low alkalinity.

The temperature question is a whole other ball of wax. I'll just say that everything happens much faster at higher temperatures and your error buffer is much smaller.

[canadawest]

The temperature wont be a deciding factor in your Xenia's health (unless it goes higher). But I do concur with Troy that higher temperatures accellerate biological processes and cause things to happen much quicker (bad or good).

The Xenia you got from Wendell may likely be one of my frags? I have kept Xenia for around 18 months and find it to be the best indicator of Alkalinity in my tank. When Alk is low (below 3.0 meq/l), Xenia stops pulsing, even shrinks up. When Alk levels are good (3.0-4.0 meq/l) the Xenia looks great and grows well.

Check your Alk levels, I think you'll find that Alk is low in your tank. Also in my experience, Xenia doesn't seem to care about Calcium levels, I suspect as it's a soft coral and likely doesn't require much calcium (if any) to grow and thrive. I base this assumption on the fact that my Xenia continued to grow and thrive even when my calcium levels were quite low (~220ppm).

[zulu_principle]

Andrew

How did you get your alk high and have you calcium at 220 ?

My xenia is very particular to water quality in general, but have never noticed that it is low with low calcium, in retrospect when my calcium is above 450 it starts to bleach my xenia, but the alk is above 3.

Just my two bits......

George, im sure I can spare another piece at the meeting.


Wendell

[Dorkel Marine 1]

Wendell thanks for the offer but i'll wait until I test for alk and start working on that. When the alk is right i'll see ya about xenia. Thanks guys for the insights on alk. Thats my goal now to get the alk where it should be.

[Dorkel Marine 1]

Hey whats a good run of the mil test kit for alk for a man on a budget.

[EmilyB]

Salifert. :D

[canadawest]

Hey Wendell,

Don't ask me about water chemistry, I'm just a saltwater hobbiest, not a scientist! :lol:

In all seriousness, I have only recently discovered that the calcium levels in my tank are WAY low. (First tested 2 months ago and was getting ~220ppm readings from my Salifert test kit).

I've never had problems with Alk levels though. I add Kent SuperBuffer dKH about once a week, and my Alkalinity is always 10.0-13.0dKH (3.5-4.5 meq/l) I have kept my Alk high over the past year in an effort to combat hair algae and a couple outbreaks of slime algae. Although I'm sure it was a combination of things, maintaining a high Alkalinity seemed to help with the battle and both hair algae and slime algae are non-existant in my tank now for the past 3 months.

So now (Well actually 2 months ago, as I got a Salifert test kit to replace my Seachem kit which I never really liked) I decided to start testing Ca levels because my newly acquired SPS seemed to be growing quite slow (the two M. Cap frags I got from you actually) and my 6 month old digitata wasn't growing as fast either. I was getting Ca readings of around 220ppm which surprised me as I have been dosing Kalk for makeup water for more than a year.

So I tried a bottle of Kent Liquid Reactor. Used the entire bottle over 10 days (dosed every night) and the Ca level went up a whopping 15ppm to 235ppm. So I chalk up that bottle of junk to experience, and acquired a container of Kent Turbo Calcium (which is what I wanted in the first place but the LFS didn't have it so I took the Liquid Reactor).

Been dosing Turbo Ca nightly for a week now, and Ca levels are now (tested today) at 300ppm. Instructions on the Turbo Ca mention that Alk levels are compromised with use of the product, so I have been twice-weekly adding SuperBuffer dKH instead of my usual once a week addition. Alk levels (tested today) are at 10.2 dKH (3.66 meq/l) measured with a Salifert test kit.

PS... I was lucky enough to borrow a Mg test kit (Salifert) from Troy, and my Mg level is at 1380ppm (tested 3 times over a week period). This is apparently well within reasonable parameters and seemingly not negatively affecting my Ca level (as it is steadily rising now).

So in summary (boy did I get off on a rant here).... I don't know how I am able to maintain such reasonable (even high) Alk levels over the past year even though my Ca levels were obviously receding except for the fact I regularily add small amounts of Kent SuperBuffer dKH every week or so to my tank?