Yikes, sounds like they may be having a "brown jelly infection" which is really the coral's immune response to stress. Those calc/alk numbers are fine for Xenia, or at least they are for my Xenia. The problem has to be your salinity or something nearby predating/stinging the coral. I'm assuming ammonia/nitrite are 0...
Have you checked your hydrometer against a known calibration standard. Either pre-mix your own with salt, or verify it against your LFS' (again, depends on how much you trust them). Here's how to make your own solution from another Randy Holmes-Farley article
1. Measure ¼ cup of Morton's Iodized Salt (about 73.1 g)
2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt (making about 79.3 g total salt)
3. Measure the full volume of a plastic 2-L Coke or Diet Coke bottle filled with purified freshwater (about 2104.4 g)
4. Dissolve the total salt (79.3 g) in the total water volume (2104 g) to make an approximately 3.65 weight percent solution of NaCl. The volume of this solution will be slightly larger than the Coke bottle, so dissolve it in another container.
That'll make you a solution of 35ppt or a specifig gravity 1.0264 (25C). So then dip your hydrometer in that solution and see what it reads. My guess, yours reads maybe 1.023 or less. This means that your actual sg in the tank is more like 1.029 which is sky high and of course stressful to a Xenia. I found this out the hard way myself with the hydrometer I used to use. It drifted WAY down. It was telling me 1.025 and when I checked it with the cal standard I got 1.019
. That meant my sg was actually 1.031... Whoops. Removed some water, added RO. 2 hours later my hydrometer read 1.018 (actually 1.025) and the Xenia perked right up.
Hope that makes sense.
Have you checked your hydrometer against a known calibration standard. Either pre-mix your own with salt, or verify it against your LFS' (again, depends on how much you trust them). Here's how to make your own solution from another Randy Holmes-Farley article
1. Measure ¼ cup of Morton's Iodized Salt (about 73.1 g)
2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt (making about 79.3 g total salt)
3. Measure the full volume of a plastic 2-L Coke or Diet Coke bottle filled with purified freshwater (about 2104.4 g)
4. Dissolve the total salt (79.3 g) in the total water volume (2104 g) to make an approximately 3.65 weight percent solution of NaCl. The volume of this solution will be slightly larger than the Coke bottle, so dissolve it in another container.
That'll make you a solution of 35ppt or a specifig gravity 1.0264 (25C). So then dip your hydrometer in that solution and see what it reads. My guess, yours reads maybe 1.023 or less. This means that your actual sg in the tank is more like 1.029 which is sky high and of course stressful to a Xenia. I found this out the hard way myself with the hydrometer I used to use. It drifted WAY down. It was telling me 1.025 and when I checked it with the cal standard I got 1.019
. That meant my sg was actually 1.031... Whoops. Removed some water, added RO. 2 hours later my hydrometer read 1.018 (actually 1.025) and the Xenia perked right up.Hope that makes sense.
