Pulsing Xenia problem, advice needed

Sharkbait19 · Mar 30, 2021

Hi,
I have a pulsing Xenia that used to be on the sandbed until it started dying. I then put it on my rockwork and it exploded in growth. Then I started noticing that the tips on the polyps are turning white, like so:

At night, they shrink down like this:

If this was only happening to one or two stems, I wouldn’t be so worried. But this is now happening to the whole colony, as of yesterday. Can somebody explain this occurrence, and if I should do anything to remedy this? Thanks!

vetteguy53081 · Mar 30, 2021

Sharkbait19 said:
Hi,
I have a pulsing Xenia that used to be on the sandbed until it started dying. I then put it on my rockwork and it exploded in growth. Then I started noticing that the tips on the polyps are turning white, like so:

At night, they shrink down like this:

If this was only happening to one or two stems, I wouldn’t be so worried. But this is now happening to the whole colony, as of yesterday. Can somebody explain this occurrence, and if I should do anything to remedy this? Thanks!

This will happen due to:
High salinity
High pk
Too much flow
Insufficient lighting or too bright
Low or no phosphate/nitrates

Mav88 · Mar 30, 2021

^^^^^Besides how much they spread Xenia are good early indicators of water quality issues, test params.

Sharkbait19 · Mar 30, 2021

vetteguy53081 said:
This will happen due to:
High salinity
High pk
Too much flow
Insufficient lighting or too bright
Low or no phosphate/nitrates

That’s it—High salinity! A few weeks ago I did a water change and must’ve messed up because the salinity went up to 1.028. Perhaps it got damaged. It is also directly in the flow, but I can’t see that as a major problem, because it’s only helped it spread...