I think my Xenia is dying… I don’t know for sure. It is all shriveled up, has been all day, but the one peculiar thing is that its stalks look inflated, almost like a balloon. It looks very strange, tomorrow I will post pictures, but does anyone know what dying xenia may look like?
dying xenia usually looks like rotting fish meat , discolored, shriveled, flaking off the rock. although they tend to do that when upset. if you leave it, they often leave just enough of the foot hold on the rock to regrow a new bunch of stems. if the water condition or whatever is bugging it is not too bad or persistant.
a touch of iodine suppliment might help. not much. just a dose.
Ive got a frag of Jon’s blue cespitchularia(blue xee) that has grown and melted at least 5 times the past year. it has always left a little blob on the rock to grow a new one. so far.
thank you! I think I’ll just let it go for now… I’m just a little upset because I’ve had a peppermint shrimp die and a scooter dragonet die within the past month and I’m not wanting to lose anything else. What do you make of the inflated stalks? tomorrow I will post a picture if I can get a good one.
do you have other corals? what size tank? What kind of lights? where is it at in your tank? what kind of flow do you have? Parameters of tank?
also you said alot of things have been dying, have you done a WC and checked nitrates/ammonia?
I’m doing a water change today, and I have no ammonia, and very few nitrates last time I checked but they may have been building up. I believe my scooter died because she just couldn’t be sustained. I have a 29 gallon, the 30 inch nova extreme with the dual light reflectors over T5 HOs which I calculated out to be about 96 watts, and the water flow? two koralia minis and one koralia 2. I’ve tried placing it as high as I can get it, but its still about… 8 to 10 inches from the surface. Also i do have other corals in there, a very small green star polyp, that is still coming out, and also a rather large Ricordia who is also doing pretty swell. I think I know why my shrimp died as well, I left it in the care of my mother, with little experience but a lot of instruction, and the water level got too low and the salinity went up, but I don’t know why that didn’t kill everything else too.
And also I have a Coco worm that has been staying in its tube alot.
Chuck, I’d suggest starting to look into some sort of ATO or getting on a good schedule for water top offs (check it before you goto work, when you come home). If you have a sump I like to put a piece of tape where the water level should be then you can have your mom top it off twice a day up to that level. Some-most animals need a fairly stable salinity. If your salinity went high then you suddenly dropped it down by adding fresh water that can be even worse for the animals inside, slower is better. Same thing with your water changes, make sure the water you are changing with is fairly close to the same salinity and temp and don’t do too much at once. Give it a few days and see how things go.
yea as anyone will tell you xenia is a weird coral anyway. I have the common red sea xenia, and one spot it will shrink shrivel and be pissed, i move it 2 inches lower and boom its reproducing like crazy and even growing in the spot i had it in the first place. I would just do as others stated, just make it as stable as possible for at least a week, dont add anything, and see what happens. still same way trying moving it around.
So if I need to top off with fresh water, do it as slowly as possible? And I will look into an ATO. I dose with Coral Accel, Strontium and Molybdenum and Purple up (which contains both calcium and iodine if I’m correct) once every 4 days. I usually do a monthly water change of about 25%, or should I switch to 10% a week?
Yes you’ll always want to try to keep the salinity stable. An easy cheap solution is a jug (no lid) with a tube in it with a few knots in it. A drop or two per sec should match around your evap rate. This is what I did before building an ato and while not perfect it makes things a little easier. You can also use this method to dose kalk but the kalk might clog up the tube and become a bit of a pain.
I’ve never dosed any of that stuff and I don’t dose iodine as it can be toxic although I’ve accidentally let a drip fall in the tank sometimes after dipping corals. If you dose kalk you don’t need purple up plus you get other benefits. Stronium I don’t test for so I don’t dose it, I assume my salt has enough when (or if!) I do water changes. Not sure about the Coral Accel but sounds like a money waster but I have no idea what it is so take that with grain of salt. I haven’t a clue what molybdenum is 
Some rules of thumb
Slower is better. Only bad things happen fast.
There are no magic potions.
If you don’t test for it don’t dose it.
As usual there are some exceptions to rules of thumb but they’ll get you through most situations.
Repeat the most important one here and what possibly may be the problem: If you don’t test for it don’t dose it.
Dosing iodine can kill xenia despite what rumors you may have read. Some times it is helpful but many times it will be harmful. I’ve grown TONs of xenia with out ever owning an iodine additive.
[quote=“Chucksmit, post:5, topic:1833”]
but I don’t know why that didn’t kill everything else too.[/quote]
Most shrimp are more vulnerable to water chemistry changes then most fish and corals.
+1 on the don’t test/don’t dose info
update Chucksmit? How is it doing?
well see its kind of perking up. I changed about 20% of water over 3 days. and Ive been slowly topping off with water, not as fast as I used too. The xenia kind of looks like it use to, about half of the polyps’ tops are open but the stalks are not fully extended… but at night it still curls up like it used too and if I were to move it, it will curl up so I know it still has life. I’m hanging by a moment just day to day check it. but it still is not fully extended like I’d like to see it.
Night to day changes are to be expected to an extent, but can be alleviated slightly by a fuge which comes on the opposite time as the tank. Many corals look different at night due to feeding, and opening up for light, but xenia is often more affected by the change in pH when photosynthesis slows or stops.
Hope that all made sense I may have said too much at once.
I believe my pH is low, like 8.0 last time I checked. Should I use a buffer to bring that up? And should I do it slowly? like bring it up to 8.1 one day, then 8.2 a few days later?
Really depends on what time you checked it last. PH will drop at night when the lights are off and raise back up during the day when the lights are on. This is why we drip Kalk at night.
You can use a buffer to bring it up - I personally like the SeaChem PH powder that will raise PH to 8.3 and not allow it to go over that (so you can’t overdose accidentally unless you’re TRYING to).
There are many other ways to raise it, drips, reactors, etc. But I do find the powder to be sufficient (just a little more expensive and not quite as beneficial as 2 or 3 part).