Fragging Xenia

[douglam]

My xenia is starting to get bigger than i want. what is the best way to go about trimming it or fragging it. can i just cut it however i want or is there a specific way to do it so that it dosent die. also how do i go about getting it to release a foot from a rock.

[GregH]

You can cut it with a razor and attach the frags to a rock with a rubberband. In a day or two it will attach and you can remove the rubberband.

 

As far as getting it to release from a rock I'm not sure.

 

Greg

[Pickle010]

I used to trim, cut, frag, rubber band, stick it in a cup with live rock rubble - tried it all. I've even injected it with boiling water to kill it.

 

Now I just place a piece of rubble in between the stalks where it sits in my tank and the Xenia climbs up on the rubble on it's own. Then I sell that piece and replace it with a new piece of rubble.

[nanoty]

HIJACK: Mine is charging up the glass on the side of my tank, would it be ok to use a razor to scrape it off the glass and relocate it?:HIJACK OVER

[eklikewhoa]

I had some that got crushed off a rock in transport and I just super glued it to the back wall and it stuck....eventually moved up on it's own but it stayed long enough to do it's thing.

[jamesnmandy]

this stuff is nearly impossible to kill, a few times when i havent pruned it back soon enough, it has gotten sucked up into one of my modified maxi jets and chopped it up into tiny pieces and they went everywhere and suddenly i had them all over the place

 

when i need to do serious pruning, i do it during a water change, get my water ready, then pull water out of tank into other container, pull rocks out that i want to remove it from, then just take a butter knife and carefully scrape its foot off of the rock, sometimes you can just grab it and pull it off the rock but it will squirt smelly water on you if you do that......then i flush a huge wad of it down the toilet the size of a grapefruit, place rocks back in tank, add new water

 

any little piece you leave on a rock though will grow into a whole new stalk, even a piece as small as a grain of rice will quickly grow, this stuff is amazingly resilient, grows so fast it can get out of control easily, my LFS has no interest in buying/giving credit for xenia frags, at least my elongata, it's so cheap to begin with it wouldnt be worth taking there.....

[nanoty]

I don't know what the deal is. My xenia is growing but not by leaps and bounds like everyone elses is. My water conditions are ok but its just not really thriving. The guy I got it from said he adds iodine or was is iodide, hell I don't remember but he says it makes them grow like crazy.