Any easy way to remove Xenia growing Inbetween zoas?

[Parsely]

I added my first corals a couple of months ago and everything appears to be doing well. However on one of my zoas, there appears to be what I am guessing to be Xenia. I noticed just one at first but now there are lots of heads sprouting and I’m afraid it will take over and over run the zoa.

I have tried going in with tweezers to pluck out the Xenia but it’s not working too well, as soon as I touch one they all close up and retreat and because they are growing Inbetween the zoa heads it’s very difficult to get them without risking damaging the zoa.

Any ideas on what I could do?

 

[OfficeReefer]

I think this is one of those cases where you place some plugs around this one and wait for both to grow and separate out. You may be able to force this somewhat with flow and lighting.

Otherwise, I would suggest to take a wait and see approach of which one wins out.

 

[Parsely]

I think this is one of those cases where you place some plugs around this one and wait for both to grow and separate out. You may be able to force this somewhat with flow and lighting.

Otherwise, I would suggest to take a wait and see approach of which one wins out.

Ok, so it’s expected they will eventually separate? I’m fairly new to this so I don’t know what to expect

 

[Semisonyx]

Mix up some food grade sodium hydroxide. 1g to 15mL of ro water is all you need. Draw it up in an insulin syringe and inject the xenia. It’ll die off over a few days. Also works great for aiptasia or any nuisance corals. Be careful, the dry powder and solution are extremely caustic and much stronger than Kalk.

 

[Tired]

Ok, so it’s expected they will eventually separate? I’m fairly new to this so I don’t know what to expect

Both will grow outward from the plug. The goal/hope is that the zoas will grow onto something before the xenia does, allowing you to cut the new, zoas-only frag away before the xenia hops on board.

 

[Parsely]

Mix up some food grade sodium hydroxide. 1g to 15mL of ro water is all you need. Draw it up in an insulin syringe and inject the xenia. It’ll die off over a few days. Also works great for aiptasia or any nuisance corals. Be careful, the dry powder and solution are extremely caustic and much stronger than Kalk.

Would this harm the zoas? They are all really intermingled right now

 

[Parsely]

Both will grow outward from the plug. The goal/hope is that the zoas will grow onto something before the xenia does, allowing you to cut the new, zoas-only frag away before the xenia hops on board.

Sounds like a good solution!

 

[Just John]

Remove the frag and put it in a cup of tank water. Make sure to get the zoas to close up. If you have scissors small enough, cut off the xenia tops and pull off what you can with tweezers. Of course be careful not to damage the zoas.
In my experience, xenia grows like crazy but is more fragile than it seems. So, next (the zoas must be closed) you can give them an h2o2 bath (search r2r for how) but to guarantee that you kill it, it would be better to do what I have done in the past to remove algae - with the frag out of the water use an eye dropper to drip the h2o2 in between the polyps on what is left of the xenia. As long as the h2o2 does not get inside the zoa polyps, they won't care. The frag will be ok out of the water for a couple of minutes as long as it doesn't dry out. Rinse and return to the tank.
(I use cuticle scissors for zoas. They are small and sharp. You can get them from the drug store)

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

Get a Couple Peppermint Shrimp, mine ate all my Xenias, and didn’t touch my other Corals. I had quite the bumper crop of Xenia.

 

[Parsely]

Get a Couple Peppermint Shrimp, mine ate all my Xenias, and didn’t touch my other Corals. I had quite the bumper crop of Xenia.

I like the idea of the shrimp. I have the Fluval evo 13.5g. Currently have 2 clowns and a tailspot blenny. I wasn’t planning on adding any more live stock. Do you think the shrimp would be pressing the stocking too much?

 

[Screwgunner]

I use forceps grab the exenia by the base and twist slowly it will come off.

 

[Screwgunner]

 

[Screwgunner]

Yep one big glob of exenia. I have taken out 50 or more just so my other corals get some light!

 

[Semisonyx]

Would this harm the zoas? They are all really intermingled right now

Probably not, especially if you inject it inside the xenia and don’t use more than w couple mL. I do this to firework cloves that grow too close to some sps and have no issues.

 

[Parsely]

Probably not, especially if you inject it inside the xenia and don’t use more than w couple mL. I do this to firework cloves that grow too close to some sps and have no issues.

Ok interesting, you take it out of the tank to do that?

 

[Screwgunner]

No stick um in the tank