Starting corals??

hey i checked out drip acclimationand it makes sence and yeh im familiar with regular acclimation and inverts needing extra care with this. and no i dont have metal halide... this is another aspect i need to address... i have standard aquarium lighting at the moment?

And thanks blank raven, i do have an ATO... thought itd be a good idea for when i went away and it works great

 

Inverts in general need special care because some are super sensitive to changes, like starfish, but with corals, I wouldn't worry about doing anything other than floating for temperature. Doubly so if they're shipped, since the ammonia that develops in the water will be deadly within a couple minutes of opening the bag.

 

thanks i checked out drip acclimation and looks good! and yeh im familiar with regular acclimatiuon and the fact that invernt need more attention. thanks for the tip on lighting. im afraid i dont have halides... still the standard aquarium lighting :-( need to look into replacement?

and blackraven, thanks! i do have an ATO... set it up a while ago n works really well

 

no problem man!

 

thanks again guys id appreciate any more input anyone has n ill read it in the morning, but its gone 1am here in england n i got work at 6am :-(, thanks again guys...l very much appreciated

 

when u say standard do you mean fluorescent lights? you don't need metal halides; it's just a choice of many for keeping corals. I'd probably get like 10,000K light. If you have like a biocube then it probably already has the right light. what exactly is an ATO?

 

again no problem man! see u in the morning!

 

just quickly, yeh flourescent lights... just the ones that came with the tank, really need to research lighting. naa its not a bio cube, its a 400litre tank... think thats about 100 us gallons? an ATO is an Automatic Top Off system.... when the water level lowers due to evapouration a pump automatically tops up the tank from a resevoir

 

cheers dude

 

o ok i gots a ATO too ;D yeah u might need to invest in at least a 10,000k light. Fluorescent just doesn't cut it unfortunately. and if this is your first coral reef then you're in luck! 100 gallons for a reef is really good because you have space for lots of corals and fish, and larger tanks are always more forgiving then smaller ones if u make some mistakes. i have a 29 gallon XD but it's still good here; fits my house and is just the mini ecosystem I want! might wanna do more research on light for corals. Metal halides are also pretty good but you might want to be careful when putting corals in a tank with halides, since corals may be more prone to bleaching, and the light is probably too strong for corals once introduced. U have to acclimate them while putting a kind of screen over them because again, the light is too strong. I'd still recommend 10,000k, but metal halides make a really cool wave looking thingy lol.