Starting a Coral Reef

[JEN H]

My husband and I are about to start on the adventure of turning our 210 gallon tank into a coral tank. We do not have it stocked to the gills with fish, and I am honestly ready to add some more color to the tank. The thing is that we really don't have alot of experience with corals, clams, etc. and so I am looking for some advice on how to tackle this. The fish and inverts we have chosen are all reef safe critters...so we are good on that point.

We have a 29 gallon biocube that has some soft corals in it. They do well in there, but we have tried mushroom corals, and I think that the lighting is just too much in there, because they don't last. We have put the lighting on timers, but still not alot of luck. The soft corals we have are doing well. We have one leather coral that keeps distributing itself all over the place. I have a feeling that we will have to frag some of these pieces off of some of the rock and move it into our big tank at some point. W have a small bubble tip in here that we originally bought for our clowns, but they never took to it.

As for the 210 gallon. We have a 72" Coral Life halide light with the antic and moon lights. I have the timer set up currently for day light 9 hours and the antic for 5 hours after that. At the end of the day, obviously moonlight. The entire cycle starts at 7:30am and ends at 9:30pm/ I do this so we have time to feed them in the morning and then enjoy the tank some after we get home at night from work. I don't know if this lighting is going to be ideal for corals, or if we will need to make some adjustments. Our calcium levels in this tank have been quite high, but since we weren't keeping corals, we haven't really monitored this factor as of late. We will do so later this week, but we have a product to dose with Calcium if needed. We have been getting a nice Coralline covering over our rocks, and are starting to get it on the glass...so I think that's a good sign for adding some corals.

I really want to have some corals with nice color...oranges, yellows, greens, blues, etc. I am disappointed with the colors we have in the biocube, as they all seem to be more purple and red...which then starts to blend with the live rock. I just get nervous spending so much on corals and not having the right parameters.... aka I don't want to lose them once I get them. I would rather not have it be a trial and error situation, but an educated decision to purchase and then nurture.

Any suggestions would help! We will get some pictures of our tank up at some point soon as well.

[JBoy251]

I don't know hope strong your light is but It sounds to me that your light is not strong enough, any time your coral is turning that color is because of not enough or proper lighting in the tank so the colors fade out, also check your water quality. Hope that helps

[blindside]

I've got some coral for sale if you want to start off soon. Some frogspawn, yuma ricordias, green star polyps, and some pink pom pom xenia

[tropheusmaster]

Mushrooms like lower light and less flow (well for my experience they do) I have mine at bottom of tank in a slightly shaded area away from heavy flow. mine were dying too, until someone suggested this to me, and i tried it and now my mushrooms are going crazy.

on reef tanks do not use cheap lighting or protein skimmers, test water regularly, do not buy any corals without research 1st.

Hope this helps,

[GKarshens]

It really all depends on if you want to do SPS or not. If so you will need to be much more stringent on water quality, flow, and lighting. Calcium is also a major concern with SPS. If you are happy with softies and LPS it is not as critical though still important. The advice above to not skimp on a skimmer is good advice. It is a vital piece in a reef tank.

[JEN H]

Thanks for the advice all. I thought that it had to do with the lighting for the mushrooms not working out. I have a small one now that is in a shaded area of our small tank, and it is doing well.

I am always checking calcium, and we are always fine on that. I have found an additive that I like to use, and our calcium honestly stays pretty consistent making it unnecessary to add additional calcium every other day....but more like once a week.

Our Ph, ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites are all in line. We typically do water changes once per month.

I am thinking that in the larger tank, mushrooms might be o.k. at the bottom, because it is a much deeper tank vs. the small bio cube that we have. The light we currently have on the big tank has the following:

Three 150 watt 10,000K HQI, double-ended, metal halide lamps

Four 96 watt True Actinic 03 Blue square-pin compact fluorescent lamps

Four 1 watt Lunar Blue-Moon-Glow 470nm LED lamps

I honestly don't know if that is enough light for coral or not. I also don't know about the exposure time with the halide vs. actinic lights. I have bought a coral book for my husband for Christmas, so I am hoping this helps us decipher some of these things after the new year.

[caferacermike]

The 3x150w halide is quite small for your tank. It'd be good for a 75g. I would be running a minimum of 3x250 halide over such a nice tank, preferably 4x 250w. Some of the nicest tanks I've seen were Oceanic 215 brick tanks with 4x 400w halide. You could make anything happen in those tanks. Honestly light is important but so are many other factors. If you only planned to run softies your light might be sufficient. You could grow out some LPS if kept directly under the light. Those types of corals can take a lot of their nutritional needs from foods added to the tank. SPS absolutely need good strong lighting. They also benefit just as much from a good calcium reactor.

So the most important thing right now is to figure out what you want from the tank itself. I've seen many people grow their tank with their budget. When they are first starting out and the entire setup is so expensive they will generally skimp on the lighting and start out with mushrooms and leathers. Then when the finances have settled they will get much stronger lighting. At that point folks begin to want to add a lot of SPS. The problem with this is that the different types of corals don't get along well at all. Leathers can shed a slime every night that can suffocate SPS polyps if not extracted promptly by a large skimmer. This is another reason why strong circulation is important within an SPS tank. From the experiences I've encountered it will well benefit the hobbyist to pick a final plan for the tank and stick with it, even if it means going a lot slower than you'd like to.

[JEN H]

Thanks for the lighting advice. I will look into replacing the halides with a stronger version...and if that is even possible with the lighting we have in the 210 gallon tank. Do you have any experience with T5 lighting? I am just curious, because I haven't seen alot about those lights with corals.

We are fine with taking our time in regards to buying and caring for our corals properly....so we are not in any rush. We have had the tank up for 9 months now without corals, but I would like to start adding some next year. However, I don't want to spend money only to have them die...that would be a waste.