My Xenia is crashing again...

joefitz

Non-member
Finally! ...maybe there is a god... :)

It will be interesting to see how much of it makes it through. I've had two Xenia crashes prior to this incident...each taking out about half of the population at the time. Half the population this time would still leave me with a good 50 very large stalks. This crash has been long overdue -- I've never seen half as much Xenia in one place as I have in my tank. I guess I'm too lazy to prune it back. That and as much as I hate to admit it, it is actually kind of cool in a colony that size.

Hopefully it will leave me with just enough for my re-aquascaping plans (where my softies will be far, far away from everything else).
 
What starts these die backs. I myself have never had one unless something went wrong (like when I had too much kalkwasser pump in an the pH went to 9.0).
 
Greg, that's a good question. I'm not really sure what the cause of my Xenia crashes have been, or it is has been the same thing each time. I haven't added anything to the tank recently. The only change is that over the past few weeks I've edged the temperature up from about 78-79 to 81. But I did that over the course of a few weeks so I wouldn't think that would be it.

I had a calcium deficiency (was 320ppm) and over the past month or so have brought that mostly back into alignment but again (400-410ppm w/dKh of 12+), I did that over the course of a month and that was really resolved a few weeks ago so I don't think that would be the cause either.

My pH doesn't change much at all (8.1-8.3), although I'm pretty sure my aquacontroller probe is not working very well...it seems to read a few tenths high (compared to my handheld probe as well as a test kit).

Nitrates are 0.

I can't really say I have any good ideas. About the 'oddest' thing I can think of about my tank is that I rarely do water changes. In fact, I haven't done one in about five months.
 
My experience:

Cousin gets xenia from friend.
I get some of the xenia from my cousin.

Few months later -

My xenia crashes.
Then my cousin's xenia crashes.
Then my cousin's friend's xenia crashes.

Interesting eh?
 
Lots of folks never add iodine to their tanks and still have Xenia out the wazuoo. I think the iodine thing has pretty much been discredited.

I don't think it's a good idea however to go 5 months without a water change!!
 
So far I've never had a Xenia crash, but I never let it go. I always prune it back. Right now it is at the Max growth that I have ever had
 
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