As The Name Implies

[XeniaKiller]

As the name implies I cannot keep Xenia alive for my life. I have tried twice now and have effectively thrown away about $125. They never last more than a week for me. This has been over the course of about 6 months, so my water conditions have changed in that time. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Matthewdmueller]

Wow thats crazy. My xenia used to be awesome and indestructable. I'm having some problems with them now but I think that they might recover. What does your water numbers look like. Someone told me that xenia like water with a little more salt in it than normal. Anyway I thought that xenia was really hard to kill, I wonder if it is something in your tank that is getting to it. Dont you worry about that shark eating some of your fishes? What kind of light rig do you have set up? Xenia need good light.

[mbeach66]

hey. it kinda seems like thats alot of livestock for a 75g tank. this has nothing to do with ur xenia, but do you find that your fish are aggressive or territorial?

[XeniaKiller]

hey. it kinda seems like thats alot of livestock for a 75g tank. this has nothing to do with ur xenia, but do you find that your fish are aggressive or territorial?

actually they all seem to leave each other alone for the most part. There is some territorialization (making up my own words) in that I cannot put another engineer goby in the tank because mine is about 3-4 inches long and runs the new (smaller) one out of all the holes. The main problem I have is that my fish are all about 3x the size you buy them at the store so introducing new fish to the tank has to happen in pairs and it's almost guaranteed that one will die. I have a 150g on order as of tonight though, so those problems should be gone as of next week.

[XeniaKiller]

Wow thats crazy. My xenia used to be awesome and indestructable. I'm having some problems with them now but I think that they might recover. What does your water numbers look like. Someone told me that xenia like water with a little more salt in it than normal. Anyway I thought that xenia was really hard to kill, I wonder if it is something in your tank that is getting to it. Dont you worry about that shark eating some of your fishes? What kind of light rig do you have set up? Xenia need good light.

My lighting set up is a 48" Coralife Aqualight Deluxe Dual Compact Flourescent (Two 65 watt 10,000K and two 65 watt True Actinic 03 Blue straight pin base compact fluorescent lamps). I have it rasied up off the top of my closed tank on legs about 2 inches from the top of the glass cover. My salt usually runs high between 35-37ppm, and my Nitrate 0ppm; PH bit low at 7.8 but just bought stabilizer tonight, Nitrite little high at .25ppm, and Ammonia little high also at .25.

Other than that i'm not worried about the shark cause it's new born a week ago so I feed it frozen squid and krill. I haven't seen any aggression out of it yet.

[Matthewdmueller]

pH at 7.8 is probably what did it to the xenia. I think that is why mine were on the fritz for so long. My pH droped way low when I moved my tank but now that the pH is back up to 8.2 they seem to be recovering.

[brody98]

Yeah the ph is probably it. I pull mine out every week and flush them down the toilet... Reef weeds.

[XeniaKiller]

Yeah the ph is probably it. I pull mine out every week and flush them down the toilet... Reef weeds.

What? You lost me....

[Matthewdmueller]

He just means that they grow like crazy in his tank and he has to cut them out before they over grow his tank once a week.

[brody98]

Yep. I used to take them to the place I get my corals from and trade them for credit but they have so many of mine now I just throw them out now. They are cool to watch but the spread like crazy.

[XeniaKiller]

Yep. I used to take them to the place I get my corals from and trade them for credit but they have so many of mine now I just throw them out now. They are cool to watch but the spread like crazy.

I wish I had this problem...and I thought you were saying you took your PH out and flushed it down the toilet. I thought I was missing something. :) I bought Kent Marine Expert Series Pro Buffer dKH to try to regulate my PH to see if that helps. I've been using it for about two weeks now. I'll probably test tonight to see where i'm at. Then I will have to begin the process of hunting down Xenia again (it's hard to find around here).

[brody98]

I dont know if you use it or not but dripping kalkwasser will maintain the ph and help a lot with the calcium.

[XeniaKiller]

What is "dripping kalkwasser"?

[brody98]

Kalkwasser is a powder you mix with your ro water and drip it into the sump with an IV line kind of like the hospitals use. It helps maintain ph and calcium. The Kalkwasser powder needs to be stirred gently to mix it up and then left to settle out overnight in a 5 gal bucket or other container, you end up with a film on the surface and all the left over powder on the bottom. The water in between is crystal clear and very high in calcium and has a ph of about 14.0 that’s why you just drip it into the tank or sump so it doesn’t skew the ph all out of whack. With regular use in all your makeup water the ph holds at 8.2 or so and depending on what you have for hard corals and how much coralline you have growing you might not have to add calcium anymore.