what kind of corals?

I currently have a current 2x65w satellite fixture with 10k/460nm actnics on it.....im upgrading to MH's soon, I just got a hamilton fixture for cheap and I'm just looking for a ballast. The fixture is 250 watt and i plan on putting it over a 55 gallon tank using either 10k or 14k bulbs and accenting it with dual actnics on the current 2x65 fixture what kind of corals can i keep? I don't want to do too much sps as i dont think i am ready for it yet and would like to stick to mostly soft corals and lps and maybe some montis(i read somewhere that they're the easiest sps) as for powerheads i have a koralia 1050 on one end and a koralia 1400 on the other and thinking about getting a koralia nano 240 for behind the rock work to get circulation from all sides(good idea or bad?) Thanks for the help

 

Almost any LPS or softies. But for right now just softies. You might have to put your LPSs near the top until you get the ballast for your MH.

 

thanks for the quick response, do you by any chance know what lps would be excluded so i know what to not get glazed over eyes when looking at them?

 

You can pretty much do any LPS you want. I am still new to this but there are some hard to keep LPS like elegance corals.

 

I would start with softies, migrate to LPS after the tank is running for a while and SPS after that and after the MH is up. Note that when you get the MH running you will want to put it up very high to start and slowly move it down so the corals you've bought prior to putting it up have a chance to acclimate. Otherwise you could burn them.

Now... if you want to go SPS later then you need to be careful what softies you put in. Softies like leathers and colt corals can start "chemical warfare" that can inhibit the growth of and even kill some SPS corals. Zoanthids tend to be fairly safe, as are most mushrooms and ricordea. Many palys are also good. Green Star Polyps (GSP) are easy and don't cause too much trouble except that they spread quickly.

For LPS, I've had good luck with Torch corals (and they look cool with their tentacles), Trumpet corals are also fairly easy.

For SPS, Montis are indeed some of the easier to keep, but again wait for a while before putting in any SPS. Make sure you get your parameters stable.