Xenia not pulsing and something happened to it's feather like things!

[kenzo]

Hey,

I had this Xenia coral for 2 and a half months and it was fine and it was growing nicely. But last Thursday I cleaned my tank and I siphoned around it and it too.I did it to all my corals including mushrooms, zoas and cap coral to clean them up. I know it's such a stupid thing to do. And then the beautiful feather like things have shrunk and they aren't pulsing like they used to! It looks like they try to pulse so hard but stops half way. Will it be alright and what did I do wrong? siphoning it ? what can I do?

 

[surfnsalt]

Xenia are touchy imo. What's your temp, they don't like it too warm.

 

[clownfitch]

They can be very touchy. To get the best pulsing action they should be in a lower flow area. As far as cleaning them off, lightly blowing water over them with a turkey baster is sufficient. If you put the baster over them where they got sucked into it it could harm them but at the very least make them close up for a while.

 

[kenzo]

My tanks temp is 26.5 degrees Celsius. And this only happened after I cleaned it. It was fine in even higher temperatures my tanks temp was 28 in Summer days but it was perfect nothing was wrong with it. It being 4 days now since last Thursday.

 

[finallysalty]

Any updates? I have had xenia for a while and love it. I grow it and trade frags at my lfs for credit regularly.

 

[kenzo]

Thnx for asking!

It's fine now! After like two weeks, now it's little taller too! Someone from a another forum said it could be something that I dosed. I dose purple up, coral vite and trace elements and also calcium! May be I was adding something too much. But it's fine now.

 

[Av8Bluewater]

Someone told me his stops pulsing when the mag is low. I don't keep it though so don't really know.

 

[o2manyfish]

Xenia are a good way to tell what your alkalinity is doing in the tank. When it's low the pulsing slows down. When it gets too high you will see that when the xenia pulses the tips don't come together at the same time, the pulsing will be disjointed.

Dave B

 

[reefermadness55]

ive been through some times with xenia, now its basically a weed that grows faster than i can remove it. once it had stopped pulsing from a lack of light, during that time the stalks were extended a bit, once they had plenty of light, the stalks became nice and short, and the pulsing barely came back, once i learned of the iodine content in a xenias body, i could only imagine how much iodine they took up as they grew like crazy, i began dosing aquavitro fuel for the trace iodine in it, literally one day after adding a single dose, they were pulsing like mad once again. hope this helps

 

[JFrar]

if i remember right, and if i was informed correctly, a drop in temp can be pretty bad on xenia, also don't they like too clean of water. I had thriving xenia as one of my first successful corals years back. and i had dirty water and kinda hot water(82) from living in florida and budgeting our electric bill from the A/C.

 

[reefermadness55]

I also keep my tank fairly warm 80-82 and the Xenia grows like a weed, they also seem to be rather forgiving as far as flow is concerned ime. As long as they have ample lighting and enough trace elements, they should grow like a virus and pulse like crazy