Help...my Xenia Are Pissed

[basscyn]

A week or so ago I inquired to the club about an algae problem i was having. Had some slime alge and some hair algae happening. The consenses of the group was to back off the lighting and do some water changes. That seems to be working. I have cut my lights back to 5-7 hours per day. this is slowly but not entirely curing the algae problem. Meanwhile...I have some xenia that I have had for a couple of months that have been doing fine until last week. I also picked up some more xenia from Ramone last week. A big rock full of it. I have seen posts refering to xenia...melting. That is exactly what it looks like. They are all shrinking a bit.

is it the lighting? I also have a small PC light on my sump. I do not have it on any cycle. If its on...its on. If its off...its off. My Nitrates, ph and amonia are perfect. Calcium 400.

What can I do to prevent there demise?

 

[stickx911]

I thought lights should go for 8 hours a day. Maybe a shorter day once a week, but 8 hours is optimal. Otherwise, I do not know. Hopefully someone can help.

 

[ga-peaches72]

Mine were doing the same thing the other week. But now they are slowly getting better. I was told a few different things but they did not work. I was told to turn the T5 lights off and to turn the skimmer off. But once I did that they did not improve. So I turned it all back on and now they are.

 

[xyzpdq0121]

Xenia start doing this a bit as the heat changes in a tank. The hotter days = hotter tank which xenia might need some time to adjust to. Pretty much my rule with xenia is that if it is going to go, it is going to go and there is not too much you can do about it.

 

[soarin']

Xenia love light ... lots and lots of it. If they do not get enough light they will start melting for sure. If they get enough light you will see the hands waving and waving in "happiness" if there is nothing else to bother them.

One of my tanks is a 6-gallon nano -- whenever the light gets too low, for whatever reason, they will behave as you describe.

I am guessing that your cutting the light back last week and the Xenia problems startling last week are very much related.

I would bring the lights back up, and work on other ways to cure the algae, such as phosphate removal, more water changes, carbon filtration, etc.

 

[basscyn]

Thanks Soarin.
I think I will take that advice. My phosphates are 0.5 ppm. which is not too bad. So there's is not much of a correction I can make there.
You mentioned carbon. Could I filter my water a bit with some carbon floss or something to reduce algae?
Thanks!