Pumping Xenia and duncan coral placement
 

I got the pumping xenia and the duncan coral recently, but I am not sure where to place them. I placed the xenia coral in the middle of the tank, the moment I placed them they started opening within seconds and started to flow. its kinda leaning towards the flow of the current, does it need to be re arranged to some other place to stay straight? also the duncan coral is slowly starting to open, I am not sure where to place them either?

The other question is I havent removed the plug since it came, I have just placed it on the rock where it sits well, will that be fine?


can anyone please help?????

What size tank do you have, what kind of lights do you have, and how much flow do you have? Can't answer your question without these specs...

BUT in my personal experience, I've had xenia grow anywhere in the tank from very high light (top 1-3 inches from the surface) to all the way at the bottom of the tank, and this was with 1x175 watt mh and 4 t5 bulbs on a icecap 660 ballast over a 92 corner tank. The duncans being a lps coral seem to enjoy more light then other softies and can go anywhere from mid to high in the tank. Leaving it on the plug is fun, if u want to remove it and can do so without damaging the coarl, that is fine too. Depends entirely on you...

but yeah, need your tanks specs to give u a clear answer.

Hi I have a 10 Gallon reef tank with 6 to 8 pounds of live rock, T5HO 2*18 watts (1 T5 10000K and 1 actinic 420 nm - runs 8 hrs) with lunar leds that run 24 hrs, 110 gph flow, 1 oscellaris clown and 1 damsel and cleaner crew (2 nassaris snail, 2 turbo snail, 2 red legged hermit and 2 striped crab).

xena will grow anyway it can but most of the time it moves or grows twards the light. Xena likes flow but to much will twist the tenticales togeather, you also may want to put the duncan up stream of the xena so that they don't touch.

Place your xenia anywhere in your tank. As stated above, it grows well in all kinds of light and flow. If you can, place it in a spot that is isolated from other rocks because it will very quickly grow and attach to other rocks. You will have to experiment if you want it to stand straight but I wouldn't worry about it. Mine waves back and forth from one side all the way to the other. Put your duncan about 1/2 way up on your rocks with medium water flow and it should do fine.

I have a duncan that started out with 3 heads, now has 6 after 2 years. It is fully inflated too. I recently moved it when I aquascaped and in the past 2 weeks I see 6 baby heads poking out. I think you have to watch how it responds where you place it. Where I "thought" mine was doing well, it wasn't. Now it is very happy! I will post pics. My pulsating xenia does well anywhere I put is unless it is in direct high flow. Like others have mentioned it grows very fast, so I would isolate it on a rock you can remove if you desire later on.

Thank you, today when I saw the xenia coral it kinda started to shrink, does it mean it has started to die? what shall I do? I checked the water parameters everthing was normal.

Your water could be to clean, feed it with phytoplankton. But xena will shrink some times before it splits or moves then it will streach back out.

You are right :) I checked it now and it is stretching back, not completely though, guess it has to come back in proper lighting.

Also I have a question regarding the light times, right now I run the lunar led for 24 hrs and the T5HO for 6 hrs, I start the T5HO at 3 pm and goes till 9pm, cos some sunlight also comes to my room till then. Do you think the time is fine or should i change something???

I don't think the lunar light will do anything for you during the day so it shouldnt matter if its on or not. It's hard to say on light times, if you are getting direct sun light on the tank it could be good or it sould cause a problem. Algee issues, over heating the tank etc. Its one of those things you will have to figure out on your own. Imo I would run the light at least 8 hours but if it works for you dont change it lol. I run my lights 13 hours a day, I only have 4 96w pc so I run it longer. My antics come on at 9 am at 9:30am my 10k comes on. At 9:30 pm my 10k goes off and at 10pm my antics cut off.

Xenia has no mouths, so feeding it anything doesn't accomplish much. It does absorb nutrients from the water column, but deliberate additions of a food item aren't directly going to help with that.

Look at the end of each tenticale, looks like mouths to me.

Looks closer. I'll try to dig up a literature citation for you, but a quick web search turns up http://www.fishcrazy.co.uk/Guides/Vi...ring-for-Xenia the first paragraph of which mentions...

Xenia essentially possess only the most rudimentary of digestive systems, with a near complete lack of cilia, a poorly developed gastroventricular cavity and nearly non-existent nematocysts. Gut studies very rarely turn up so much as a single microzooplankton; on the other hand, they regularly turn up zooxanthella which has led to speculation that xenia may actually farm it's own meals internally, growing excess zooxanthella which are then consumed.

And of course while the cause of xenia's pulsing behaviour is still only speculation, the leading theory has for some time been that it assists them in moving more nutrient-laden water over their surface, with the goal of facilitating molecular adsorbtion of nutrients directly from the water. I stress that this is just a theory, as anyone claiming to know definitely the cause of this behaviour is handing you a line.

Some xenia relatives - heteroxenia comes immediately to mind - do have more developed mouth structures, but even in these the organs are apparently non-functional.

Ok so they do have mouths they just don't use them for eatting plankton.I haven't resarched xenia, I just noticed my xenia does better when I feed the tank phyto. I am not an expert its just my opinion lol.

So scratch that only add phyto to your tank if you want to pookie the water up faster, or don't skim as much.

You can put xenia anywhere, I am in the process of trying to get rid of it...giving it away to LFS.....very invasive.