Xenia

Germanman

My fish are my babies
hey ive noticed that at night when i turn my moon light on or if my fuge lamp shines into the aquarium my Xenia go nuts. they "pulse" much faster and pull in closer to them selves. im always very interested in corals and want to get a phd in coral reef ecology so im always interested in comparing experiences. so has any one else noticed this same thing in there tank?
 
Mine always balled up at night like coliflower.
 
MIne open and reach for the sky! Not sure why. Nocturnal feeder perhaps?
 
My xenia's are different at night... The ones under the blue moon led's still pump and the ones that are in total dark get totally shrunken up until the light comes back.

Another interesting thing I have noticed is that my devil's hand leather will shrink up about 1 hour or so before the lights go to dusk and then go to moon. Its like they anticipate that the lights will be going off soon and it says its had enough... or my other thought is that when I feed the fish the second time closer to that time a fish keeps bumping it or food and making it shrink lol not sure yet...
 
Both of our Xenia (elongata and pom-pom) close up pretty tight at night. The elongata gets a pretty direct hit from a moonlight, but still closes up until morning.

I have several toadstool leather frags that will remain open during the night under the blue LEDs, but it's not every night (maybe 1/2 the time).
 
Some of my xenia 'shrink up' after the lights go out, then after about an hour or so re-expand and pulse at a higher rate than during the day. The one's that don't shrink seem to go directly into 'high pulse' mode a little after the lights are out.
 
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