Xenia

[xurifle06]

I added a stalk of xenia to my tank the about two days ago and its not looking so good. the LFS told me to rubber band it to the LR to get it to attach. any ideas at how to keep it alive?

[Sushi]

what are some of the specs of your tank? how large is the tank, what type of lighting, how strong is the flow, location and placement of the xenia, are there other corals in there that might be an issue, is it unattached or attached to LR, how is the water quality, how old is the tank?

 

anyways, xenia is a poor coral to "ship" ... so if you bought your xenia and had it in transit for a couple hours, it's not going to look too good for the first couple of days. they tend to secrete tons of mucus (which smells like rotten scallops), and when they do this they look pretty much limp and "about to die"

 

it should take xenia about 2-3 days to return to normal after being transferred between tanks. if they are unattached to LR, you may try to lean the xenia onto some LR, and use some rubble to nudge it in place. turn the flow down slightly for a couple days, and in the meantime the xenia will attach itself firmly onto the rock. it will take another 2-3 days for xenia to attach to the rock...

 

in these couple days (roughly 1 week) you should monitor your tank just in case you see that it's really not going to make it. when xenia dies, it pretty much just "melts" or withers away and you're going to have to do one hell of a water change.

 

have some pre-mixed saltwater on standby and a syphon ready just in case can visibly see that your xenia isn't going to make it.

 

as long as you see that the xenia is still "solid" and not transparent or to any extent withering, it should be OK. good luck, let us know the specs i asked above and maybe we can further help you.

[MrAnderson]

When I got my Xenia frags about a month ago, they shriveled up terribly, the heads closed up, the stalks went limp and stringlike, and I thought they were goners. I left it alone and it took about a week,but they slowly came back, reinflated and started new colonies within two weeks of transplantation. If your params are OK, they should be OK with time. Just don't mess with them too much; one colony I kept moving eventually melted.

[xurifle06]

The newly added xenia seems to be doing much better after about 4 days. i abbandoned the rubber banding idea and kinda just put in into a little hole. It seems like it is attached and all the arms are fully extended. the fingers arent really pulsing though

[xurifle06]

its very purple in color though, is that bad?

[flickj79]

my xenia is purple, it is in perfect health about to split i think it has gotten some bumps all over its stalk i will post some pics up tommorow when i can find my cam i wanna see if someone can tell me if it is going to split

[ghostbear29]

I just got some from Fragpacks.com and it was unnattached floating around with another mushroom.(bonus)? Anyway, It got pretty roughed up which at first I thought it was GSP. ha ha! well a day later and wow! It was tall and pulsing. The only thing is mine is kinda brown on the fingerparts. I wish mine was purple. But it is really cool. It loves Phyto from Kents. Imagine that! I thought that stuff sucked? Well, it will do till I get some better brand. Any ideas what that would be!