whats with pom pom?

[Skyetone]

I have gotten two nice sized "frags" on two separate occasions lately. And they have both withered and died. I believe my first one has at least left a dozen babies. But I have leathers, other Xenia, zoo's, frog spawn, torch. there all doing great. Whats the deal? Alot of reefers have issues with pom pom. Why?

[dakar]

No real clue, so far nobody has been able to narrow down anything specific yet (at least that we've heard of). It seems some people can keep them, and some can't. Sounds like you are like us, we had two huge colonies that were doing great, then one day meltdown, yet everything else thrives.

My personal opinion for us is from the lack of iodine/iodide, not even measureable from our water source (shallow well), so we have a couple more and am now supplementing iodine weekly (testing weekly as well) trying to get it up to and hold to at least 1ppm. We'll see what time brings us. After a month or so now, they appear to be doing well.

[Reptoreef]

The biggest thing besides stable decent water quality(ca, alk, ph levels) seem to be a trace iodide levels.

[Reef_Angel]

Skyetone, your tank seems to be similar to ours, so whatever it is we're doing, we're making the same mistake equally when it comes to pom pom. We still are working on it over here but there comes a point when you look at all the other major beautys that flourish in our tanks and don't sweat the little buggers. It still frustrates me because I hate being defeated by something that should by right be ok...I think, but it does. We have some in ours now and it's hanging in there and doing ok. It kills me though when I hear people complaining about it and throwing fist fulls of it away! ACK!!!! I guess I'd have to experience a take over like that to understand that feeling though. I don't think that's going to happen in our tank anytime soon. If you figure if out. let us know your secret. If we do, we'll do the same for sure!

[BUGZME]

I don't dose iodine at all but i do weekly 5% water changes and mine grow like weeds

[davejnz]

Pom-Pom is a wacky weed.I had it in my frag tank for about 6 months with no appreciable growth.The other variety(elongata)grew fast in the same tank.I put a small piece on the bottom of my LPS tank and it started climbing up the glass.It has now become part of my monthly maintenace to trim it back to keep it from taking foot on the LR.I'm not sure if iodine plays a role(i dont dose)but it does seem selective as to where/what conditions it will thrive

[Reef_Angel]

I've seen yours Dave and it's unbelievable. I could kill that off for you in no time. That sounds awful, but it just doesn't like our water. The worst part is, I really kinda like it. Go figure!

[Sea~Horse~Whisperer]

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who can not keep xenia alive in my tank. In the last year alone I have spent over $ 300.00 on xenia (buying and shipping)......but I have NONE in my tank. I finally gave up and decided it just wasn't meant to be, lol. I'm not sure why it won't grow in my tank. BUT....it never looked very healthy after shipping anyways. It could just be that it never had a chance in the first place. I think I may go get some from gooch this spring and try again. I refuse to pay $45 for a tiny stalk of it at the LFS, when gooch tosses out buckets full of it.

Angie

[dakar]

Oh not Gooch's place... you'll leave paychecks behind..

Angie, have you had any luck with the elongata variety, or have you lost those as well? We've got really lucky with them a while back, melted down with the pom-poms, all but a couple of polyps that we were able to save and they've done very well since. Not that we can frag it or anything, short of one, we've lost all attempts to frag it.

As far as additives go, we used Reef Plus through the summer for the trace amounts of Iodide, many of the softies appeared to respond to it. We ran out and haven't placed a dry goods order in a while. No place to get it locally for a decent price, so just using the iodide supplement trying to hold some measurable amounts in the tank.

But I stand in the corner of folks that say don't add anything you can't test for.

[Skyetone]

Yea well in looking at my stuff tonight. I believe that it "may" be just kinda mad at the change of environment. It's in a reasonably high light and low flow area. So I think that is prime. I have been killing xeniea for 6 months (of the year i have been reefing) and now am growing some silvertip and just brown without issues. One stalk is crawling up a large abolonie shell to where ever it wants. Thats interesting to watch. I'll have to iodide tomorow. Whats the diff in iodine and iodide? Is there a preferance?