case, you really have nothing to worry about
because a FOWLR tank, by definition, contains
no corals for the starfish to feed upon.
In the event that the starfish begin to
reproduce beyond your threshold of tolerance,
you might consider harvesting and offering
them to a fellow hobbyist who keeps harlequin
shrimp Hymenocera picta—a species that
feeds exclusively on live starfish.
Iodine and
Pulsing Xenia
I have had a colony of pulse
corals (Xenia sp., I believe) in
my reef tank for about six months. They
seem to be very healthy, pulse vigorously,
and are even reproducing. My question
is about their need for iodine. I was told
recently that these corals must have regular
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iodine supplementation or their pulsing will
stop and the colony will crash. Is this true?
I haven’t been adding iodine to my tank, but
I will start adding it if it’s the best thing for
the pulse corals. They are my favorite out of
all the corals in my tank.
Virgil Jeremy
via email
Answering this question is going
to be a bit tricky! I guess I would
have to say that it depends. I have
had pulsing xenias growing in my
75-gallon reef tank for over a decade now, and in
that time I have never supplemented iodine—yet
they continue to pulse and spread around the
tank like wildfire. I did have a few modest crashes
where a few of the colonies (a small fraction of
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those present in the tank) disintegrated, but they
rebounded almost immediately in each instance.
On the other hand, some hobbyists have found
that they can’t keep these corals alive, or that
their pulsing either slows or ceases, without
iodine supplementation.
Why would pulse corals grow rampant in one
tank without iodine supplementation but fail to
thrive without it in another? I believe it comes
down to the fact that no two hobbyists’ tanks are
identical in terms of water quality. One theory I’ve
heard floated is that pulsing xenias, which absorb
nutrients directly from the water (in addition to
being photosynthetic), may be less dependent on
iodine additions in tanks with slightly higher levels
of dissolved nutrients. Conversely, tanks with very
20 www.tfhmagazine.com
October 2010
