My 10 gallon xenia forest

[Joe Pusdesris]

This xenia forest was intentional, and cost me virtually nothing. I already had the bakpak1, and extra rubble. The sand is pool filter sand, and the lights are 6500k GE bulbs.

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[philipchan]

I think it will be better to paint or tin the back and put a blue light on it

 

[Casy]

i agree with philipcan!! the tank is gonna look even better =]!! what are u gonna do with all that xenia?? u can sell frags or trade theme!! =p

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

It is not painted because I like being able to see the tank from both sides, and I like the cheap lights. I don't want to put expensive blue lights over my tank.

I have other tanks for xenia propagation, I do sell frags. This tank however, is intended to be a display for my dorm. I will probably cut out the three big ones before I bring it.

A neat thing about this tank is that I have never cleaned the glass before. The filtration and xenia growth keeps the nutrients low enough that no algae ever grows. I tried putting some caulerpa in there for some extra color, but it just died out after a few weeks.

 

[iLLwiLL]

hmmm, I wonder how a xenia fuge would handle nutrient export from a larger reef tank. That could be a fun experiment to try seeing as how you already have everything setup.

~Will.

 

[brandon2432]

that is a great idea will. I was just sitting here wondering what I was going to do with all this blue xenia in my sps tank I have a softie side but the xenia is taking over.

 

[RadReef]

You should throw a clownfish in there, they'd love it! I have a friend who has two clowns and they hosted to his xenia.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

It has been done many times before, with varying degrees of success.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

RadReef, I do have a clown in there, he is in the bottom right of the first two pictures.

 

[skleek]

Forrest is the right word! :eek1:

 

[phxadrian]

This is cool.

 

[KafudaFish]

Go to HD and get one of those blue screw in party lights and see how that would work. They are only around $7 or a xenia frag.

It has also been shown that xenia is good for nutrient export on a previous RK article.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

Thankyou for the complements.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15489243#post15489243 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by KafudaFish
Go to HD and get one of those blue screw in party lights and see how that would work. They are only around $7 or a xenia frag.

It has also been shown that xenia is good for nutrient export on a previous RK article.

I have already considered that, but they are very low voltage, and I think they are just normal lights with paint on the glass, so the par has to be extremely low.

Really, I like the low k bulb, it makes the tank look different.

 

[KafudaFish]

I meant more for asthetics than anything else. It is obvious the xenia are growing well. You could gut your lights and build a simple hood out of scrap wood for $10 or buy some electic sockets at HD as well.

Good Luck.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

Hm, yeah, I might try one out sometime. Thanks.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

Welp, I was out of town for five days --usually not an issue-- but there was an extremely long power outage. It seems that the oxygen level of the tank dropped too far, and well...

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It has been my experience that xenia are always the first to go in low oxygen, and this is no exception. Oh well, they will grow back. At least my clown is still alive, for now.

 

[Lyfey]

wow I didnt expect to see that picture after the first ones..

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

Yeah, the whole thing is rather disappointing. The water is much clearer today than yesterday; the skimmer and carbon really seem to be helping. I will post recovery pictures every few days in case anyone is interested.

 

[subman719]

Wow! That's not even my tank and I feel devistated! That is so sad to see! Can I recommend putting a large UPS battery backup on that thing? I have UPS's connected to my system so in the event of an outage, It will at least keep the powerheads going for several days.

 

[Joe Pusdesris]

Yeah, I will get a few of those for my tanks eventually... They are just so expensive. Too bad I cannot trade frags in for those. D: