Xenia Hardy?

[jasper24]

I have been getting conflicting information. Is Xenia easy to maintain or not? I have a 12G nano DX with 48w. So far ricordia, mushrooms, frogspawn and GSP all doing well. Thanks!

[vince R]

The way I understand it is if it lives at all it's hardy. Meaning it either melts away to nothing or grows like a weed.

[Entropy]

Very hardy IME. Does not ship well though. I have two types in my tank. The pom pom grows fairly slowly IMO and I would suggest that type for a nano. The elongata IME grows like a weed and if left unchecked with probably overcrowd the rest of your corals in short order.

[jasper24]

The kind in my LFS is white and pulses every couple of seconds. Is that pom pom?

[H2OLUVSME]

i agree with both of the prior posts. if you can get it to last a month it will proliferate massively......epsecially the elongata (which i have :rooleyes: )

[Ti]

Xenia are pretty bullet proof.

[MDboyz]

They are like hair algea in my tank.. :P

[algonquin]

Yes I would agree that xenia are pretty much bullet proof. Ours was ate right down to nothing by our Brittle Star. And now it has come back and looking great. And we thought that it was dead.

[xian]

What kind of brittle star is that?

Mine never hurt a thing.

The short white xenia is Xenia umbrellata. It sounds like the Xenia at the LFS might not be all that happy if its only pulsing once every couple seconds.

[sipe]

where to buy Pom Pom off the web?

[xian]

I wouldn't buy it on the web. Heres why:

1 Its a notoriously bad shipper. If it survives the trip it often doesn't recover.

2. Online vendors are getting 40$ a frag for the stuff and you can probably find someone in your area who will sell it to you cheap or even give it to you for free. I gave away two frags to my reef club last month and sold three to my LFS for store credit. I'd give you some but I'm nowhere near Iowa.