Adding corals to new tank?

My tank has been running for a bit over a month and just finished cycling less than two weeks ago. On my 60g cube I'm running a gen 1 radion, two mp10s, an oversized reef octopus protein skimmer, and a media reactor with carbon. All I have in there is a yellow hogfish and some snails and nitrates are less than 2 ppm. I have kept corals before and had poor long term success due to a lack of stability and testing (mistakes I will not make with this tank, it's a learning process), but I have experience nonetheless and know what zoas, lps, and easier sps corals seem to like and dislike. I want to place an order from East Pacific Aquaculture but to justify the shipping charges I'd like to buy at least 7 or 8 small frags. Is there any good reason to wait? Everything in the tank has gone well so far.

 

The amount of coral you introduce at one time really makes no difference. Corals are not going to contribute to the bio-load.

IMO you should start with easy soft corals, zoanthids/palys or mushroom, and not proceed to expensive lps and sps until the tank has run for 2-3 more months. If it were me I would stick with some easy soft corals.

After looking at their site, they have zoanthids, mushrooms and soft corals that should be fine. I would be hesitant to proceed to LPS like Acans, Favia or Chalice in such a young tank, but if you do get a couple of easier LPS just make sure to monitor and manage as indicated Ca/Alk and Magnesium.

 

I agree - i jumped a little early and picked up some nice corals - that unfortunately did not do well. Especially the Acro's. My Zoas and Palys all doing very well.

 

I have some salifert test kits for mag/ca/alk coming in on Thursday so I'll be monitoring those closely. How much calc/alk would 3-4 lps corals consume?

 

Probably an insignificant amount initially, you will not need to dose. Simple water changes to maintain the basic 3 will get you by for many months. Just get some basic numbers and monitor for depletion.