Easy hard coral help?

[chrisnif]

Okay, my tank is young, about 6 weeks, but most the rock was a few months post-curing in another tank of mine. I have a 56 gallon (which is 24" tall) tank with a 12" custom hood that puts my 175W MH bulb about 8 inches off the water. The highest rock point in the tank is 10" from the surface, so about 18" from the halide. I'm looking to get my first hard coral, I've got a mushroom, some zoos, and green star polyps that are doing fantastic, but I'm still nervous about hard corals. Is there one or two you guys could suggest that are easier than others? I'm thinking something like frogspawn so my clown can host it perhaps, or maybe montipora (I think thats the hard coral that looks like plates coming off the side of a rock) I'm not well versed in what each particular coral is, but I know I like those 2, and I like birds nest but I think that one is a difficult one.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Also can some folks give me an idea of what dendros go for per polyp? My one LFS wants like $10 per polyp and I think thats probably really high.

[steve wright]

Chrisnif

Birds nest corals are not one of the more difficult SPS corals based on my thus far limited experience of these types

Monti , scrolling or plate corals are also not to advanced so these would be good choices also

couple of things that I have learned that could save you some early heartaches

1 - if you buy one, place it low and allow it time to adjust to your lighting before moving it up the reef to where you want it, I use 3 stages, low, middle and then upper and take 4 weeks to get from one to the other. (yep 2 white outs so far due to rushing new corals to the top of the reef)
2 - flow, SPS corals dont fare well if drifting or falling debris is allowed to stop on them, so plenty of water movement over and around ( not pointed directly at) to ensure they stay clear
3 - water quality is much more important with SPS corals so stay on top of your testing and react immediately to any negative trend ( Phosphates and Nitrates ) if your not using GFO now is the time to start IMO
4 - Keeping a mixed reef, softies and SPS corals - the softies notably leather type corals emit chemicals designed to keep other corals at bay. SPS dont take kindly to this, so running carbon 24/7 is a good way to reduce the danger of this chemical warfare.
5 - Magnesium, Calcium and Alkalinity - these are much more important in a tank with SPS than they are in a tank full of softies , so you need to have the test kits to monitor these and the supplements required to correct any deficiencies
6 - changes , abrupt changes , are more likely to result in a healthy SPS - white out (slow or fast) called STN or RTN (slow tissue necrosis or fast tissue necrosis ) where the flesh of the coral peels off, either over night or over a few weeks - so if you are making parameter corrections, use the 3 reef calculator and dont exceed the advised daily changes

so optimum water quality combined with stability are very important with SPS corals

Dendros, cant help as the prices I would pay are of no use to you anyway (geographical reason)


Steve

[jonjonwells]

Perfectly said.

[iLLwiLL]

Like steve said, a monti cap and/or a birds nest would be great. LPS should be fine as well . . . my favorite is the torch but I have a branching hammer that is growing much faster.

~Will.

[norg.]

+1 to steve. Dendros go for forty a head here. Ten is good.