my first xenia

[clown-t]

made my weekly trip to pa and bought my first xenia and some red turbo snails. as soon as i figure out how to post a picture with my camera i will do so.

[Neal359]

with xenea it will go one of 2 ways ether it will die in a week or 2 or it will grow like a weed

[fishguy_8]

mine is going route #2 [img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

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[JerseyReef]

mine went route #1 after 2 years in my tank [img]/ubb/frown.gif[/img]
both my white pom-pom and red sea xenia crashed this past week and still don't have clue what caused the crash...

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Mike
jerseyreef@home.com

[Caesar Augustus]

Same happened to me Jersey. I had a pom pom that did well for around a year and then up and died[img]/ubb/frown.gif[/img] Everything else in the tank is fine. He was beautiful I dont know why he died and I'm still perplexed about it. Good luck with yours!
Keep the reef,
Napoleon

[RhondaJ32]

I was just wandering something if any of you can tell me. I have heard that when xenias die they can release toxins and crash the whole tank. Has anyone had a problem with this when their xenias died? Did you remove the xenias as they were dieing to prevent this from happening?

[Caesar Augustus]

Mine was not very big but when he fell off and dissapeared the tank was unhappy for a few days but a water change later all was well. As for toxin release I'm not sure but whenever something goes south its gonna upset the balance.
Keep the reef,
Napoleon

[Reef Engineer]

Rhonda,

I wish my xenia would just have one of those mysterious ailments and crash - I'd risk losing the tank if I could just get rid of it! [img]/ubb/mad.gif[/img] I purchased a $24 frag two years ago in October and the thing has become the biggest nuisance known to man (or at least me!). Despite my taking the tank apart on two occasions to try and rid myself of it, it keeps popping up all over the tank. Of course, having a blue tang that eats it (and therefore spreads it all over the tank) doesn't help matters.

To answer your question, though, I believe that they can have a noxious effect on the tank since I have had mini-crashes that caused many (all?) of the tank corals to close up for sometimes days at a time. I think that the bigger problem would be the ensuing bacterial bloom that could quickly deplete the oxygen in the tank and cause the death of the fish/corals. I would hazard a guess that the latter is probably more the cause for the "deaths" than an actual toxin.

Randy

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Come meet the gang!
http://www.homestead.com/reefengineer/homepage.html

[JerseyReef]

Randy,
I think the real question is, why do xenia just crash for no apparent reason?

My Pom-Pom was the first to show signs of stress. I had moved the flow in the tank to better suit one of my SPS that seems to be having growth problems (flow was one possible issue).

I believe this caused the intial stress and the Pom-Pom slimed up. This stress cascaded to the rest of the colonies (several Red Sea Xenia and two other White Pom-Pom colony), depleted the O2 in the tank and caused Ph levels to drop off to 8.05. My normal daytime level is around 8.35 to 8.4 . This caused further stress to the Xenia. ALL of the colonies died within 3 days, despite all of my attempts to save anything.

This was was verified by the sudden algae bloom and the increased co2 and lower O2 levels that insued 36 hours later. This had little effect on the other animals in the tank.

So going back to question...
Pom-Pom Xenia produce a considerable amount of "slime" in their efforts to capture food throughout the day. If not given enough flow, this "slime" (I know there's a sceintific term for it, it escapes me...) can sufficate the animal (IMO) and cause it to crash. Can this "crashing" release toxins in the tank and be a signal to the other xenia colonies that something is wrong or do they react to the depleted O2 levels, increased Co2 levels and decreased Ph levels and start to crash themselves? Thus causing this circle to become even more vicious...?

Thoughts...?

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Mike
jerseyreef@home.com

[Neal359]

when deeling with them you must keep a goor alk reading and suplement the tank with iodine. my lfs gets all his xenea frome one person who has them groowing like crazy in his tank. he brings them in and gets store credit hasent hade to spend his mony on livestock in a long long time

[JerseyReef]

Neal359,

While I'll agree with you on maintaning good levels of alk and calicum, I will disagree with you over the iodine. This is abousoultly untrue that xenia need iodine supplements to survive. Granted, some living sea animals need iodine to survive but it's given naturaly through frozen food. I don't believe there's any or very little content in flake food.
Wasn't this rumor of iodine started by our friends over at GARF? Or was it Julian? I don't remember...

Anyway, let's NOT turn this thread into GARF or iodine flamewar [img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

Let's discuss more on the flow issue...

I still believe the determing factor here is flow. For those how have had crashes before, how was the flow in the area of the first colony to be affected?

• Was the flow always good in the area?
• Was the flow always good, then it was changed?
• was the flow always poor in the area

It was also brought up on another thread that lighting can be an issue ( see it here ), while I'll believe that lighting does play a role in this. Can certain xenia thrive under different types of lighting?


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Mike
jerseyreef@home.com