Xenia and Phosban

[mujtba]

Do xenias like phosphates?

my xenias were fine.. a week ago i added phosban and it seems my xenias look like they loss color and look hurt..

i dont think anything else changed..

so wat could be the issue?

[bigworm175]

Yes they utilize phosphates and that could be your problem. Never heard of phosban killing them though. Any experts want to chime in?

[kcrush4989]

Xenia likes whater that is not in prestine condition from my experience. They will start to melt so to speak. After some time they will fade away all togeather. They like high nutrient water.

Keith

Originally Posted by mujtba

Do xenias like phosphates?

my xenias were fine.. a week ago i added phosban and it seems my xenias look like they loss color and look hurt..

i dont think anything else changed..

so wat could be the issue?

[gpask]

I'm not going to claim to be an expert but I am running Phosban and my Xenia is thriving. I think Xenia was introduced to this hobby for the sole purpose of confusing everyone. It seems like it spreads wildly in some systems yet dies almost instantly in others with the same parameters.

[adambirk]

when i first added my xenia it was thriving and mutiplying like crazy. then i started to get into sps alot more so i started trying to get my water perams more near perfect. i started running gfo and the first two weeks or so i lost almost all my xenia. that was the only coral that was affetcted. after that the remaining colonys were not so great looking for about a month then they rebounded and starting reproducing like crazy again

[mujtba]

yea, i am starting to think my xenias are dying due to phosban.. i removed it for now, so lets see if they rejuvenate or degenerate... hope im not too late.

[sahin]

It would be good to know if they recover after you remove the phosban, so let us know please. Thanks.

[greggnyce]

If you use too much gfo it can depress your PH, this can be a problem too.

[seapug]

Check your Alkalinity. Fresh Phosban can cause a drop in Alk that Xenia doesn't like. That said, I have red sea Xenia growing in my fuge and run carbon and phosban in reactors 24/7. I've never had any issues with it melting.

[Ken_S_NY]

I have no problems running GFO and growing Xenia

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It may be difficult to extrapolate the available phosphate just from whether one is running GFO or not.

I think there is a reasonable correlation that xenia may prefer newer tanks or higher nutrient levels, and if enough GFO is used one might very well deprive xenia of iron, just like one can do to macroalgae and microalgae if the use of GFO is high enough.

There are also many species/strains of xenia that may respond differently to GFO/iron and may have differences in other available means of nutrition.

[mujtba]

i assume xenias remove phospates then...

[VacavilleFC3S]

everything thrives in my tank except xenia.

[wishfish]

Originally Posted by greggnyce

If you use too much gfo it can depress your PH, this can be a problem too.

What is GFO? And, what is phosban? I assume this is another type of reactor like a carbon reactor or calcium reactor? I am, obviously, a newbie. How does one know how much or how large of a reactor one needs to maintain hard and soft corals?

---Wishfish

[greggnyce]

What is GFO? And, what is phosban? I assume this is another type of reactor like a carbon reactor or calcium reactor? I am, obviously, a newbie. How does one know how much or how large of a reactor one needs to maintain hard and soft corals?

GFO and Phosban are the same. The reactor is a media reactor, check out bulkreefsupply.com you can see what they look like there. Essentialy you are passing water through GFO (granular ferric oxide) or phosban, which in turn lowers you phosphate levels because it is absorbed by the media. You then change the media out when you phosphates are detectable or risen to an undesired level. Keeping phosphates low is the essential for growing SPS corals or LPS corals ( hard corals). It is not as important with soft corals as they tend to like more nutreints in the water, however if you have too many nutreints algea will take over. The amount used depends on the water volume of the system and the phosphate level. If your system is an average size between 30-200 gallons I think the regular sized media reactors will work fine.

[ser_renely]

tagging along, interesting.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

i assume xenias remove phospates then...


Yes, all organisms with increasing tissue mass do so. Since they can grow rapidly, they can actually take up quite a bit of nitrogen and phosphorus. Here's a chemical analysis of xenia and other things (Caulerpa, a leather coral, and skimmate):

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-1...ture/index.php


What is GFO?

I detail what it is and how it works here:

Iron Oxide Hydroxide (GFO) Phosphate Binders
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/rhf/index.htm

[mujtba]

Been 4 days now without PHOSBAN... Xenias seem to be doing much better.. PHOSBAN was the culprit! So phosban kills xenia...

[Inked414]

Interesting

[vickreyreef]

i regret putting the xenia in my tank...I run GFO 24/7 and they still spread like weeds......but when you even scrape them off the LR they just grow back again in mass.....I think I found my excuse to do a tank upgrade....

[Mikeeal]

I added Purigen to a TLF reactor recently and my FIELD of xenia that was absolutely thriving has all but withered away. I just finally put 2 and 2 together after reading this thread. It's the only thing I've changed. Hmm.

[mujtba]

well in my old tank when my xenias grew like wild fire, i made $$ off it!!! so thats not a bad thing... if u want to kill it, phosban it..

[Anemone]

This is something that I have seen anecdotally for years - addition of a phosphate sponge or media results in xenia crash. Whether it is the result of less phosphate, or some chemical in the media I don'[t know. Also, as Randy said, there are some who have used the same products without any xenia issue, so there may be some species/strains of xenia that react to phosphate media and some that don't

Kevin

[black_ice_pc]

I had a single stalk frag of pulsing xenia that grew into at least 20. I would frag it about every 2 weeks and sell to my LFS. I ended up selling all of it to buy equipment.

Anyway, I eventually bought another frag about 4 months later. I had started using Phosguard and phosphates were nearly 0. My water was much better than it had been before. The frag disappeared literally within a week.

[euromomtx]

I know Xenias are not leather corals but perhaps they have a similar reaction to the metal oxide as some of the leathers do?
I believe I killed my colt by using a filter that contained aluminum oxide to bind the phosphate. Apparently some of the aluminum or iron oxide particles can leach into the tank and sort of poison corals -specifically leather corals- that are sensitive to it.

I don't know if phosphate binders that contain iron oxide do the same though...