chris&barb
Reef-Geeks
ive had my share of xenia, this is what ive found that they like.
bright light, mine did best directly under MH and would clime up the rocks and tank glass to get closer to the light.
less then clean water,when my tank was at its dirtiest the xenia did its best.ive cleaned up my system alot and had to get rid of almost all of the xenia because it just started to dwindle away with out the extra nutrients in the water.
moderate to strong flow,they wouldn't inflate as large in strong flow but definitely grew faster in strong flow.
iodine is a myth, i never add iodine and sold $200 worth of xenia a month. iodine is found at .06ppb in NSW. thats hardly anything and i doubt it makes any difference to xenia. AFIK iodine has never been proven to be used substantially by corals. regular water changes and adding fish food will easily keep iodine levels at the extremely low levels its found in NSW. adding iodine can do more harm then good, its toxic and the hobby test kits for them aren't worth the ink that's printed on the box. back in Jan 05 i had a ICP test run on my tank water. i think i paid $500 for everything i had tested and around $150 of that was just for iodine. the chemist had to send a sample to a sister lab in Boston for the iodine test because his equipment couldn't test down to .06ppb. i showed him the test kit i had and he got a good laugh from it.
another thing you may hear people say is that there shrimp like it when they add iodine because they molt more. thats not a good thing, whats happening is the shrimp is being poisoned and its putting all that extra iodine in it shell to get it out of its body. when the shell can't hold any more the shrimp is forced to molt.
nobody knows why they pulse. mine almost always did but move it to another tank and it was a different story.
bright light, mine did best directly under MH and would clime up the rocks and tank glass to get closer to the light.
less then clean water,when my tank was at its dirtiest the xenia did its best.ive cleaned up my system alot and had to get rid of almost all of the xenia because it just started to dwindle away with out the extra nutrients in the water.
moderate to strong flow,they wouldn't inflate as large in strong flow but definitely grew faster in strong flow.
iodine is a myth, i never add iodine and sold $200 worth of xenia a month. iodine is found at .06ppb in NSW. thats hardly anything and i doubt it makes any difference to xenia. AFIK iodine has never been proven to be used substantially by corals. regular water changes and adding fish food will easily keep iodine levels at the extremely low levels its found in NSW. adding iodine can do more harm then good, its toxic and the hobby test kits for them aren't worth the ink that's printed on the box. back in Jan 05 i had a ICP test run on my tank water. i think i paid $500 for everything i had tested and around $150 of that was just for iodine. the chemist had to send a sample to a sister lab in Boston for the iodine test because his equipment couldn't test down to .06ppb. i showed him the test kit i had and he got a good laugh from it.
another thing you may hear people say is that there shrimp like it when they add iodine because they molt more. thats not a good thing, whats happening is the shrimp is being poisoned and its putting all that extra iodine in it shell to get it out of its body. when the shell can't hold any more the shrimp is forced to molt.
nobody knows why they pulse. mine almost always did but move it to another tank and it was a different story.
... may be trying to put it up to 8.3 at least :lol: 
