Xenia elongata (Pulse Coral)

Source: liveaquaria.com

QUICK STATS

• Care Level: Moderate
  
• Temperament: Peaceful
  
• Lighting: Moderate
  
• Waterflow: Medium
  
• Water Conditions: 72-78° F, dKH 8-12, pH 8.1-8.4, sg 1.023-1.025
  
• Color Form: White
  
• Origin: Indonesia
  
• Family: Xeniidae
  
• Insert Date: 26 May 2010

The Pumping Xenia Coral, are also known as Pulse Coral, or Waving Hand Corals. They are colonial animals with multiple individual polyps attached to a piece of solid substrate. They form stalks as they grow, and to reproduce. The eight-tentacled polyps can pump, or pulse, and many scientists believe the pumping action of the polyps slowly opening and closing is designed to dispose of gasses and waste. However, it is still unknown why these coral do pulse, and there are many water, lighting and nutrient factors involved. It is not necessarily a sign of ill health if they do cease to pulse. The parent colony of these coral frags was acquired from one of the aquariums in our company and then quarantined and given a health inspection before being propagated.
Aquacultured Xenia are hardier than wild-caught species and tend to reproduce quickly. Therefore, provide adequate space between them and sessile animals, especially other types of soft corals. They require a medium to high light level combined with a medium to strong water movement within the aquarium. For continued good health, they will require the addition of iodine and other trace elements to the water.

They contain the symbiotic algae zooxanthellae from which they receive the majority of their nutritional requirements. Additional weekly feedings of micro-plankton or foods designed for filter feeding invertebrates are also needed.

Found an advert on www.zeewaterforum.info from chriszuid in which he was selling couple of corals. Among them where two Xenia types, blue and tan coloured. Not sure yet which ones he has. Asked him for pictures and prices.

Here is a picture I found of his aquarium with the Xenia

Even though I dont know yet which species of Xenia it is, we bought it from chriszuid for 15 euro. It's 2 coloures of Xenia on one rock. It is located on the top behind the rock where the Kenya tree is on. Pictures will come soon!

Yesterday we bought some more corals, so I decided to clean the front window and take some pictures. Here is how the Xenia looks now, it has opened up nicely!

The Xenia is still doing nicely, waving on its rock. Yesterday I went to a local pet store (not the one we normally go to) and they had a piece similar to this one, only half its size. Price they asked for it was 75 euro’s :s

Xenia is still looking good

Jansch from the zeewater forums gave me the suggestion that it might be Xenia elongata (if it was pumping). Since it is pumping I checked it on both Liveaquaria and Reeflex (http://www.reeflex.net/tiere/1384_Xenia_elongata.htm) and after seeing the movie at reeflex I had to agree...its the Elongata

The Xenia seems to be having trouble with the brown stuff that is all around the aquarium again. We hope it will not suffer the same faith as the previous Xenia because of this.

The hermit crabs move around at night, while taking a picture of one the Xenia was included.

A while ago I recorded some movies, I just took the parts out from each animal separate.

The Xenia is starting to look bad, I have read that filtering over carbon might be a problem, which could be since we always filter over carbon. But it looks to be going bad since we added the new fish, and now I read somewhere angelfish might be a cause of this. Now in the time we had our previous Xenia we also had an angelfish, and now we have one again.
The previous Xenia we got december 14th last year and was growing nicely. March 2nd we added a flame angelfish. Since March 18 the Xenia was becoming thinner, but it was also early march the brown stuff started to grow.
On april 22 we officially declared the angelfish missing, but we haven't seen him before either. April 23 the Xenia was as good as gone.

The new Xenia was doing fine until recently. But June 11 the brown stuff made his comeback, and Juli 7 we got the new Angelfish.

We decided to sell the angelfish, see if this would help and the Xenia would regrow. It's a test which has one casualty, but better go out on sale then that one animal would die.

Xenia still growing thinner as you can see in the picture. Going to catch the angelfish this week. No luck finding a new home yet.

The angelfish is sold, hopefully now the Xenia can recover. It also shifted a bit because we had to rebuild to catch the angelfish.

Xenia doesn’t seem to work very well for us for some reason. The new rock with Xenia we got died out within 4 months. However, a small part seems to stand it’s ground, so we do have hope that from there out the Xenia recovers again. If that is the case then the Angelfish where the problem both times. It is still a pity if you see how beautiful it was when we got it and how it looks now, but let’s hope for the best from now on.

18 september we bought 3 rocks filled with 5 new corals. One of the rocks has a new bunch of Xenia and mushrooms, which is located next to this rock. On the other side next to this rock there is a new rock with a Kenya tree and Cabbage Leather.

The Xenia on this rock has died now. I have no idea what is going on with the Xenia every time. For some reason we can’t keep it alive.