Coral Care

I am hoping my fellow experienced reefers can help out a newbie like myself here. I am still months away from adding any coral to my tank since this is my first SW tank and has only been up a week, still cycling, and everything I read suggests not adding corals until the tank is 3-4 months old because of how specialized their care is.

I have lots to learn on coral and plan on keeping mostly lps, softies, polyps, and leathers. Main question is in regards to attaching and removing corals. I believe you buy a coral you attach it with some epoxy to the rock or place it on the substrate? As the coral grows will it overtake the rock where you can never remove it without killing it? Since we plan on moving within the next few years being able to break down the tank is a must.

 

Many corals you can remove easily from rock. Soft corals propagate easily this way, you can cut leathers, sinularia, mushrooms, green star polyps, xenia to name a few, without killing them. You may loose a few smaller pieces, but your chances are good that most will survive.

LPS like the Euphyllias, Duncan, Acan can be removed from the rock as well since they produce their own stony skeletal structure that can be removed or cut with the proper tools.

 

Corals can handle alot more then most of us think. IVe fragged SOOO MANY of them i cant even remember the number of them ive fragged.

+1 to what is said above for sure.

I started adding corals in the first month of my first aquarium. But my first tank had corals so i started out right away in them. But i think you should wait like you said.

I think reefing is a part of steps in process, take baby steps and move your way up. Start out with fish, master them and keep the water params good and stable for the first 2 months or 1 month until you think the are good. Buy yourself some zoas or palys or something easy and hardy and master the keeping of most softies.

Once you get done mastering those guys, you can try some LPS. I jumped into LPS and some SPS in my first few months and alota them died so I slowed down and just went back to the basics, now i can do anything i want and they will survive.

 

I agree with zoanthids21. Zoanthids and softies like sinularia and mushrooms are almost fool proof. Goods to start with. Favias, blastomussas, and duncan corals are easy to keep LPS corals as are torch and frog spawn corals. yellow and green star polys are next to impossible to kill. start with a few cheap hardy corals and then slowly add on. and dont get discouraged when one just up and dies on ya. it happens to everyone. water circulation is a corals friend and you cannot have to much! watch mixing colt corals with LPS corals...colts like to chemical warfare with LPS and they win alot. have fuN!

 

I too am new to salt water tanks and have just started adding corla to my tank. My other corals are doing great but the green star polyps is not. Any advice?

 

Try moving the location of the colony, sometimes they need more/less flow/light. I find mine really like a lot of flow and medium lighting, I have them half way up on my 55 gallon. I had them on the sand bed and they did not do so well, now that I moved them they are growing like weeds.

 

What kind of lighting are you running? Do you have a good skimmer or any kind of a sump/fuge? What are you using for flow? Answers to all of these questions will greatly dictate the species of coral that will be successful in your tank. LPS will do great in a lower light, low to medium flow tank, polyps and zooanthid's will do well in a medium to heavy lit tank with moderate flow. Zoo's do best when that are not disturbed, the colonies that are doing the best for me are the ones I do not touch. Once I had them where I wanted them and they started to grow, I didn't touch them. Leather's will need more flow as they shed their skin to grow. Mine have done really good on the sand bed with a ph pointed at them. I have recently started keeping SPS and so far so good, I have them at the top of my tank with good flow. I run a +1 sized skimmer and I have a +1 sized fuge/sump combo. I also have a very light bio load (3 fish, 1 shrimp, 1 urchin, 1 RBTA in a 55 gallon) so my levels are very stable. I also do a 10-20% water change every week, this allows the nutrients that have been used up to be replaced. This also means that I do not dose my tank with nutrients, with the exception of 20 ml of Ca every other week. The next step for me will be a tank controller, mostly for heat as I run metal halide lights and they can warm up the tank in the summertime in Missouri in a hurry. A controller would let me control my fans/chiller/heater much more effectivly than I am capable of right now. Also, I started really slow and have gradually added more coral/fish over the last year. As of this writing, I have yet to lose a coral or a fish in my tank. Remember the old saying, go slow, let it grow and you will do just fine! Good luck!

 

Thanks, I will give it a try!

 

GSP when I first got it in September 2011



GSP last week in my tank.



Once they start growing they grow like weeds!

 

This is an interesting thread for me, can the above polyps grow out of control and take over? and if so how do you control them? is it just a question of pulling pieces off and disgarding.
Thanks in advance