Coral for a newbie, what kind?

[Hemmie]

Hi,
Since I'm basically starting from scratch after crashing....letting my tank sit fishless for 6 weeks after Ich or something killed everything, I'm asking everything I can! Bear with me.:eek2:

Is there an easy coral that I could add *after* I'm good to go? I'm NOT willing to risk killing anything again. I have 2 Percs in Q..I'll be adding them in 6 weeks. I have the regular Flourescent lighting that came with my 55. It's *2* 40 watt bulbs. I can certainly upgrade the bulbs if necessary. Can I add stronger bulbs or do I need a different hood? I'm not very familiar with the corals although Ive tried to do some searches and find what a beginner might try, but I'm still not too sure. I have read, and made a list of the parameters that these corals and such need, but am still not sure what might be an easy one to start with.

I'm completely cycled, only waiting for the Ich to die off. My Nitrates have fallen since removing the AquaClear sponge, and my pH stays steady at 8.4ish. Ive been doing 5 gallon water changes weekly. Salinity stays low at 1.023 and I did try to raise it slowly with little success although now I have the time to get it up there if need be.

Its a 55 with quite a bit of L/R, (no poundage, I bought it piece by piece) I have 80# of L/S, 2 Detrivore kits, an AquaClear300 sans sponge or carbon for the moment, a Prizm Skimmer, an airstone, and 3 Power heads. One agitates the surface water and the other 2 are about mid way down either side of the walls. Any lower and they "ruffle my feathers" too much.

I have no crabs, a few Nassarius snails, and several dusters that survived the crash. My water has been at 81-83 degrees right along. No medication has been added to my tank unless you call Garlic a med..and that was an excercise in fultilty. I hate the smell of Garlic!:hmm4: Besides, the fish turned up their noses at it.

I'll be adding my Percs (if they live) and a Royal Gramma when the Ich has run its course, (if it does). If it doesnt, Ill know when I add the Clowns and then I'm off the the Cichlid store.

I read about these beautiful corals but still cant find enough "starter" info....whats easy, where and how to place them in the tank, etc. I'm not into "easy" because I'm lazy, I merely want to start slow, gain some experience and do it right.

As always, thanks...
Hemmie

[DukeDog]

Hi Hemmie I don't know if this is what your looking for but what I would do is buy the book "A practical guide to corals for the reef aquarium" . This gives some good info and pics. Its around 20 bucks and worth it. Another book I would get is "The conscientious marine aquarist" . This one gives a lot of good info that isn't over everyone's head:) Know as far as coral you could get with you lighting . You really need more light for a lot of corals. You could do mushrooms . There are many types and colors that are very beautiful . Good luck
Jeff

[ron4675]

Hi Hemmie,
DukeDog is right you'll need to upgrade your lighting to keep most corals. I tried the "lets see how many normal output florecent lights I can fit on my tank" game but it really doesn't work. Sure I kept an open brain and some mushrooms alive, barely but once I switched lights then the corals really come to life, growing, more colorfull. Options are very high output, power compacts, and metal halide.
I use 4x55watt power compacts on my 55 gallon tank and have brain corals, yellow polyps, mushrooms, sps. The nice thing is they don't cost much (compared to M.H.) last longer than vho and the colors of the bulbs are getting better. Try lampsnow.com I have found them to be best in price. There are other threads as well here with coupon codes for them. I have bought bulbs and lamps from them and so far everything has gone smoothly.
Aaron

[OodleyBoodely]

With the lighting you have right now, you could start with mushrooms and zoanthid/palyathoa polyps (the common brown or brown/green type, not star or yellow polyps). These are very hardy and low light tolerant. I kept these in a 55 with a single no triton bulb for close to a year. They did great-grew well and multiplied like rabbits. I also kept in this tank a couple of small anemones that came off an anemone-hermit crab shell (if your lfs sells these crabs, just buy an empty shell with the anemones on it-you don't want that crab in your reef tank). They can thrive under low lighting also and do not pose a threat to your fish. Any of the other anemones would perish from lack of lighting. You can certainly start a very attractive invert tank based on differant colors/types of 'shrooms and polyps now, and with the addition of 2 or 3 more no bulbs you could add more soft corals such as toadstools, finger leathers, ect. If you do choose to upgrade your lighting to the pc, vho, or mh, you will have a much greater variaty to choose from. I upgraded to a vho retro from lampsnow.com and have been very pleased with it-so are my corals-even the experimental acropora frag is doing great.

[Covenant]

I have 2/96 W PC on a 30g tank - super cheap DIY kit from AHSupply, even considering shipping costs. My parameters all fall within the "normal" range except my pH is usually around 8.5 or so, a bit high, but that may just be my test kit (Hagen). Anyhow, these are my corals, and keep in mind that I chose them specifically for hardiness because I couldn't bear the thought of my corals paying for my beginner's experiences:

-toadstool leather (common)
-cabbage leather
-mushrooms (various colours, red prefering shade, green-striped loving light)
-Brown star polyps
-protopalythoas (as far as I can tell - they might be just normal palythoas, though, but at any rate they much prefer shaded areas even with my "low" lighting)
-galaxia

Except the mushrooms, they all prefer current, and the toadstool, BSP, and galaxea all have elongated polyps that sway beautifully when the current is a bit stronger, and shorter polyps in a lesser current.

I hope this helps you to decide which corals you feel you can try.

-Lisa

[Hemmie]

Thanks very much!
I'll start my Coral/Lighting research right away!

Im excited now that I have something else to ponder besides what I did wrong the last time!