Researching SPS and future choices

[bbl_nk]

Hey all,

I am currently researching corals and am heavily favoring an SPS tank. My goal is to pick 3 coral species and stick with them. My eventual coal is to have multiple colonies of each and create some luxurious stands of corals over time. I am looking at a few corals that have caught my eye:


Montipora Capricornis
Acropora species
Pocilipora species


This would be my first go at keeping corals, so I want something relatively easy to keep but challenging enough to keep my interest for a while since I will be more or less keeping these for a long time.

From what I understand most of these are photosynthetic corals. I would be housing them under 216w of T-5 lighting (4x54W-2 daylight and 2 actinic) and may add two more bulbs down the road. I had been given some advice that soft corals are good for the beginner and also add zooxanthellae to the system and help with these corals.

Is there any truth to this? I don't want to introduce a species to the tank that I don't plan on keeping for a while. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

[CarmieJo]

Pocillopora is pretty easy to care for. They are brooding corals so you could also try breeding in the future.

Corals are very specific as to which clade of zooxanthellae they are in symbiosis with. I have not heard that softies (which are easy to care for) add zooxanthellae and I am not sure that there would be much benefit if they did.

[lReef lKeeper]

i personal have no experience with T5s, but the montipora would likely be fine under the lighting you have, if kept higher up in the tank. IMHO, Acropora would need to be at the VERY top of the tank and less than 18" from the bulbs themselves. if you have T5s with individual reflectors ... you might get away with acros around half way down in the tank.

Carmie learned alot about T5s at macna and is veiwing this thread right now.

[lReef lKeeper]

i would also keep softies out of the tank, as they produce toxins that are known to stunt PS growth.

[Reef Newb]

Hi, I have never heard or read about adding zooxanthelle to your system and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong but I dont believe it would be neccessary.

Anyway, as for your lists of corals I can add a little input but others will probabley add much more info soon.

Corals like the montipora cap, acropora, (and I am not too familiar with the pocilipora so I will leave that out) have many different species within both of those groups with very different requirements, some are much more finicky than others and some are much more hardy. The more common red, green montipora capricornus seem to be the most hardy, I have a red cap and it is growing very very well. You will just need to figure out which kind you want and do the research to figure out how to take care of that individual species.

Perfect example, I bought a pokerstar montipora as my first coral cause it was pretty, pokerstar monti's have blue bases and green polyps, I didnt really meat its needs now I have a blue based with reddish brown polyp pokerstar montipora, although it is growing really well now with the light upgrade.

Same goes for the acropora, some people say that before adding acropora you want you tank to be well established, as with most corals keeping your calcium, alkalinity, and magniseum stable will be key, Carmiejo has a link to a good arcticle about how the above 3 relate to each other.

[Reef Newb]

ha ha 4 posts in 3 minutes thats funny :)

[CarmieJo]

James Fatherree had a great talk about lighting at MACNA! I recommend checking out his new ezine Liquid Medium (http://www.liquid-medium.com). Each issue so far has had an article on lighting. I think that you would be fine for sure with T5's with Montipora and Pocillopora. I believe that Acropora would be OK higher up if each bulb had individual high quality reflectors.

[CarmieJo]

A Simplified Guide to the Relationship Between Calcium, Alkalinity, Magnesium and pH by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com (http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php)

[Reef Newb]

I keep meaning to bookmark that arcticle, now I did thanks.

[MarkT]

Your choices of SPS seem to be pretty good.

In my experience, some of the Acropora corals seem to be easy to care for while others are much more difficult. You might want to look at something like a Green Slimer. It grows pretty fast, is hardy, and adds a nice splash of color to the tank.

I've found Pocilipora to be relatively hardy , seems to grow quite fast, and does well with medium to high lighting.

Some of the montipora corals seem to do quite well too. I have a large colony of green montipora that seems to grow an inch a month. This does well regardless of where I put it in the tank.

I've become a fan of T5's. The colors of the corals seem to be much better and growth is good too. I've had a pink bird's nest coral for a couple of years and under metal halides, growth was fine but it was always brown and never seemed to turn pink. I recently switched to T5's and this coral has steadily been changing to a nice pink color after just a couple of weeks.

[bbl_nk]

Thanks for all the input guys! I am definitely going to mature the tank out a bit. Am switching salt brands from Coralife (got a good deal on it) to Seachem Reef Salt since I can get a 5g bucket (160g) for around $37 locally. From some article I swore I bookmarked but didn't ...They broke down the contents of the salt and it seemed to be in the higher range for both magnesium and calcium. I would like to get these levels up as much as possible from the salt and was also looking at BRS's two part kit to boot.

Now another question. Would you recommend adding corals before fish or fish before corals? I have nothing in there and realistically am about 1-2 months from even thinking about buying corals or fish.

[CarmieJo]

I think this may be the study you are talking about. Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine - Feature Article: Inland Reef Aquaria Salt Study, Part I (http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/11/aafeature1) and Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine - Feature Article: Inland Reef Aquaria Salt Study Part II (http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/12/aafeature1). I think that Eric Borneman makes a great case for corals first in this article The Building of a Reef (tank) (http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic23945-9-1.aspx).

[MarkT]

I would personally start by adding a few fish and maybe some hardy soft corals shortly thereafter.

You probably want the tank up and running for 6-12 months before you start adding SPS corals. This gives you something pretty to look at while gaining experience with maintaning the tank and keeping up with water quality.

[bbl_nk]

Thanks Mark. My only concern is adding the softies in there since I won't be keeping them down the road. Not a fan of frags for frags sake (sorry fraggle rockers!) unless they are put in place for the purpose of staying there a while. Plus wouldn't want to just rent a nice piece of softie covered rock and then lose $$ on a trade-in, etc. I will probably work on getting the fish built up over time and maybe explore the corals around the end of the year. That would be 7 months of a tank with a gradually increased bioload and the ensuing (hopfully) equilibrium, etc.