xenia scrubber instead of algae scrubber?

[dolt]

I was feeding my fish at my office in my softy tank and noticed that there was absolutely no nuisance algae - this tank is a little neglected (last water change months ago - I know I'm a bad boy)it has just a few fish in it and they are not large and tons of red sea xenia green star polyps and zoanthids and a crappy skimmer that is so small and ineffective - I do not feed a lot in this tank - at home I have my spoiled baby SPS tank - it gets huge water changes every week, has a great protein skimmer, much better circulation but I have some nuisance algae - the sps tank gets fed very little and has a pretty low fish load as well - this led me to believe that it must be the xenia and they must obviously be better at using up nutrients in the water - I was wondering if anyone has experience using xenia and harvesting them from their sump like chaeto or other macroalgae? and if so does it work well? I'm thinking about giving it a try

 

[MIKE NY]

I'm using red sea xenia along with chaeto in my fuge....every little bit helps.

 

[dolt]

which seems to grow faster or more?

 

[Amphiprion]

some sort of study showed that Xenia sp. consumed substantially more nitrate than Caulerpa and Chaetomorpha algae per unit mass. The same applied to certain DOCs as well.

 

[dolt]

how about phosphates?

 

[Znut Reefer]

I'm also using 3 different types of xenia in my refuge, no macro alge since its a bare bottom sps reef.

 

[Amphiprion]

I would assume that they use a proportional amount of phosphate as well, but don't quote me on that.

 

[jsweir]

Only problem is in a low nutrient sps system they wither away. Mine only last a few weeks. But I am BB...

 

[jay24k]

I have alot of Xenia in my 180 and I have 0 nuisance algae. I wonder if the Xenia really helps because of the lack of issues I have. MY side glass which is 18" deep because of the 6" overflow, 24" tall is pretty much solid covered in it. I also have the short mat Xenia on the back glass that is probably covering about a square foot currently. It grows fairly decent for me.

I don't know if I believe the nutrient bandwagon per se. I've seen several tanks that have nutrient problems that can't grow Xenia and others that are nutrient starving tanks with Xenia growing nuts. I think overall they do help some but I don't know to what extent.

 

[jsweir]

Interesting. I would like to know what the limiting factor is. I really like xenia and would like to keep at least a little in the tank. I just can't for some reason...

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

Check out Garf, they had a big thing about xenia filters.

 

[dolt]

cool guys thanks for the great info - I think that I am going to try this - I do not have a huge phosphate problem (is less than 0.03 by salifert) but still have this annoying brown plating algae on my rocks a little - and I am not barebottom - anyone know where I might find that article that addresses this? also is anyone using just xenia without macroalgae in a fuge or otherwise?

 

[Mr aqua]

I had brown plating until I got a purple tang...

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

Are you wanting an article about the brown algae, or the xenia filter?

As I said, Garf has info on it, and had an article in an old Marine FIsh Monthly

 

[dolt]

I was looking for the article that Amphiprion referred to above - I'll check the garf stuff and see if it is there

 

[dolt]

I could not find anything on garf about xenia used as a nutrient export mechanism - there was stuff on there about xenia propagation for sale though - maybe I was looking in the wrong parts? I also looked under filtration but nothing

 

[G-money]

Amphiprion,

Can you point us to the study on the nitrate uptake of Xenia. I'd be interested in reading that.

It would make sense, since Xenia (as far as I know) aren't very capable of capturing prey. I have a BB tank and had just a little pompom on a rock when I started. Now I have to prune like a madman just to keep it in check - eradicating it is unfortunately out of the question... I guess I could cover the whole rock in a layer of epoxy.

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

Yeah, I could not find it on their site anymore. Try e mailing them, I know it was garf that did a lot on it and were using some large xenia bed filters on some tanks.

If anyone has old MFM it was in 99 or 2000 I believe.

 

[onthefly]

I'm with jswier......

I love the look of the stuff, but in my system it dies in a month. So do all forms of macro algae.

 

[dolt]

well you guys are doing something better than I am as I have a minor algae problem, and if you have that, you have a nutrient problem - I am just looking for a "natural" way of taking care of it - I was going to get chaeto, but have not gotten around to it, and this just seems easier (and hopefully better) I have resorted to using phosban, but it has played havoc with my alk (and it is expensive - xenia are free)

Jeremy Blaze - I see that you are skimmerless - what do you use then for nutrient export? do you have a lot of SPS (you gallery shows as lot of softy type stuff) - I have always been curious about skimmerless systems