a little help?

[arielanglin]

okay, so i have a 29gal biocube that has been up since december. has been going pretty good, with coral and fish. currently i am having a problem with a pulsing xenia. i incidentally skipped a water change or 2 but now my tank is back up and running, with only one noticeable difference. the flesh on my pulsing xenia is receding quite a bit. i am unsure if this is just a by product of not maintaining the tank, or something else that can be fixed. i have been boosting the tank with phyto to try and replace nourishment, but it doesnt seem that anything i am doing is helping. any suggestions?

all other corals, both hard and soft are doing great, and growing just as before negligence.

 

[snakeblitz33]

What are your water parameters? Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia, pH, Alk, phosphate, calcium etc?
What is your flow rate? What kind of lighting do you have? Where is it placed in your aquarium?
Xenia actually like a little extra iodine in their water... You can do some more research at garf.

 

[arielanglin]

my water is as follows,
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 20ish
pH: 8.4
ammonia: 0
calcium: 420
i dont know what my phosphate level is
and KH is 240 or around there...
flow rate is 243 gph
lighting
36 watt true actinic 03 blue
36 watt 10,000K daylight
.75 watt blue0moon glow LED
this is what came in the canopy, all 3 are run aobut 8 hours a day.
xenia is placed in the front left corner, in i would say moderate flow, on the bottom level. it has been in that position since i put it in the tank in either maarch or april i would guess.
i have added iodine as well, but my efforts are doing little to nothing.

 

[mr_x]

skipping a waterchange won't hurt xenia. it's something else. have you been supplementing without testing?

 

[arielanglin]

you could say that.
i jumped into saltwater without knowing anything.
and i pretty much followed ZERO of the rules.
i put in water, live rock and sand and then a week later put in fish and corals.
i really dont follow the specific dosings on chemicals.
somehow i have been able to maintain a stable tank, with occasional red slime but still stable, while my cousin who follows every rule has lost his tank twice.
i eyeball my amounts, but my water tests have always been good. im not sure why it works, but it works for me.
if thats what you were asking. im not really that knowlegable on saltwater.

 

[mr_x]

well, just a shot in the dark, but supplementing things like iodine and magnesium, strontium, ...even calcium can be extremely dangerous to your livestock.

 

[arielanglin]

yeah. idodine is the only thing ive been adding in the chemical area. so im not really sure what to do. i might just sit and see what happens, maybe it was just time to die?

 

[mr_x]

i would do a few waterchanges for starters. it's never a bad thing to do waterchanges.

 

[arielanglin]

yeah i did one last weekend. i usually go 2 weeks between changes. i only do about a 4 gallon change, but its on a 29 gal tank.
also another almost totally unrelated question,
i have a red coco worm that is in my tank and the "tube" that it is in is getting too long. is there a way that i can shorten it without hurting the worm?

 

[mr_x]

i don't know about coco worms.
i would do more frequent waterchanges until you get the excessive iodine(or whatever is hurting the xenia) out of the tank.

 

[tdog7879]

Originally Posted by Mr_X
http:///forum/post/2743627
well, just a shot in the dark, but supplementing things like iodine and magnesium, strontium, ...even calcium can be extremely dangerous to your livestock.
MR_X do you supplement any of your tanks?? If so what do you use? Why would supplementing be bad if you no what your working with?

 

[arielanglin]

alright. thanks. im def going to have to go talk to my guys at the store. would a picture maybe help? ive realized my description may be not helpful.

 

[sula]

Originally Posted by tdog7879
http:///forum/post/2744249
MR_X do you supplement any of your tanks?? If so what do you use? Why would supplementing be bad if you no what your working with?
I'm not Mr X but here's my opinion: adding trace elements like strontium and iodine can be dangerous because their normal concentration is, well, trace. It's very easy to over-dose your tank, especially in a nano. When I used to have a 29g I dosed with b-ionic, and tested for alk and Ca to make sure things were in balance.

 

[tdog7879]

i sometimes dose the tank with Ca and Ph buffer.

 

[arielanglin]

okay, so thats the base of my xenia.
before, it pretty much covered all of the rock, or at least where it is lighter colored.

 

[mr_x]

i don't see anything wrong with that xenia. they move upwards towards the highest spot on the rock towards the light.
as for dosing- i don't dose anything. if i needed to(i know that i don't need to because i test the water from time to time) i would figure out how much i need, and only add that much. i would not just dump some in "sometimes" for the heck of it. that's how you can run into trouble.

 

[oceansidefish]

+1 Mr X, I would go ahead and do a 3g or so water change every 4 days or so for a couple of weeks just to be sure if you are adding things.Then I would stop dosing things you cant test for

 

[arielanglin]

all right. thanks so much.
i guess i kinda freaked out over something i was causing! whoops!