how to control xenia's?
 

can anyone tell me how to control this scourge in my tank...it's getting tiresome and i need a good method to keep it in check. no, i don't want to frag it if thats what you're gonna say...any other ideas? i wish i never put them in there in the first place now!

cheers,

sell them.

don't want to, can't be bothered...but thanks.

Same way you deal with aiptasia.

And I can't get it to grow at all in my tank. Just shrinks away and dies. Go figure!

Rob

yah, you think that will work, considering the xenia's are about 30x the size of aptasia?

WOW 30X thats quite big.

I think so. But the only way to be sure is by manually removing them. Scrape them off your rock (them and the top layer of rock beneath them). Labour intensive, but hey...you wanted a solution :)

yah, one thing i wont go as far as doing will be removing rockwork...just can't do that so i'll try the clip and burn (kalk) method i suppose, wish me luck.

peel them off. they are like stickers on glass. just grow your fingernails a little long and peel them off. then you can stick them onto anything else.

Or ask at your LFS to see if they ever get these guys in as hitchhikers and to look out for them for you.

http://www.seaslug.info/factsheet.cfm?base=phyllodjako

Ryan

Chin,
done that before but it's not so easy when it's attached to rock at the bottom of your tank:sad: .

good idea, i wonder if they prey on anything else though...

And what's worse, is the putrid smell they give off. After several hand washes the smell was still there.
Ugh, I don't want to be peeling Xenia off anything any time soon.

How about putting some other stinging corals beside the Xenia to sting the life out of them.:lol:
Believe it or not, but my zoas+GSP did that to a stalk of Xenia.

amen to that brutha! my wife came home like an hour later and knew exactly what i had been up to! peeehewww

I found that an unnoticed cracked heater in the water mixing bucket will wipe out the xenia population in only a few hours after the water change. Can't say I'd try it deliberately though.

i would be happy to come scrape them all out of your tank if i get to keep them in the end lol

let me know i'm serious

Kyle

c'mon down!

I had a rock that I took out of the tank, peeled off the xenia, then cooked the area with a bic lighter, and put the rock back in the tank. Two weeks later, more xenia. Good luck....:)

Green Star Polyps kill it...but GSP's are just as bad for taking over a tank. If you want some GSP's give me a shout...or I think Tom R is a little closer to you and he generally has plenty.

Scott

Xenia were overrunning my tank as well causing me to trim and peel constantly to keep in check. Got to the point I was just flushing it.

Have noticed since a little after starting to use a Ca reactor, that the spread and budding has stopped and what I have now left is about to where I had trimmed back last and it's even decreasing a bit.

Thinking that it's more the alk from the reactor since it's around 10KH but has on occasion swung higher and my Ca never is really that much, ranges about 350-380.

i've got gsp's and don't seem to have any problem with them...slow growers in my tank.

-Great i put my xenia on the very top of my nicest piece of live rock that makes an arch:sad: but it's real nice always growing and feeding and ain't causing
any problems so w/e, i'll leave him

Only problem with peeling is if you dont get 100% of it off it will come back. Now you have it in its original position and where ever you moved it to. I have also found little tiny xenia growing on rocks that the mother colony was nowhere near. I suspect from trimming back the mother colony IN the display tank(wont do that agian). Just frag it and sell it. I dont even have the original piece I bought and the frags have more than paid for the original piece. I find it easier to control this way. After I cut frags off, if there is a little residual xenia it will sprout up fairly soon. Then I take a sharp tool and cut the rock the little sprout is on. Viola no more xenia(there).

Another option would be asking your local LFS if they would trade pound for pound, your rocks with xenia for theirs without xenia. I don't know about your local stores, but in my experience, LFS's really like rocks with any type of growth. The newbie's always buy that first.

definitely not going to dismantle the rockwork for that but i suppose it is an option...one i won't entertain personally though.

i added a yellow scroll to my tank about 8" or so from the xenia I had. Within a couple hours, the xenia shrivled to almost nothing, I had to place it somewhere else in the tank to live! So you could try buying a coral that is incompatible with them and just move it around until you finish them all.