Beginner Corals?

[sharij1]

What are a good group of beginner corals? I'm just now starting research and was wondering what some suggestions would be. I'm looking for colorful, hardy, forgiving, etc.

Right now I have just the standard hood light that came with my tank. I will be upgrading my lighting and would prefer LEDs...just not sure which ones I will be getting.

Also, it is just a small 29G Long tank. I have a 75 I will eventually be switching to a saltwater tank...just not at the moment. So far water parameters are good...been real good for awhile now. 1.024, 8.2 ph, and 0s across the rest of the board.

Thanks for the help!!

 

[squishifishi]

mushroom corals: these are one of my favorites. adapt to a wide range of lighting, but often look best under lower lighting or slightly shaded. VERY colorful.
Zoanthids: the multicolored polyps are Beautiful. can live under most any lighting.
Palys: a bit more drab than the zoas, but still pretty and fast growing.
Xenia:These have a fascinating pulsing movement and are usually pretty cheap. They grow REALLY fast and can be considered invasive because of this.
kenya trees: easy, cheap, and good looking! also can do well under lower light.
Pretty much, most softies make good beginer corals.I think mushrooms and xenia are the most 'forgiving'. green star polyps are good to, but Some people have problems with them closing up alot.
What kind of lighting do you have? good luck!!!

 

[sharij1]

I edited my post up above to state the lighting issue. Right now it is just a standard hood bulb, but I plan up upgrading my lighting and am leaning towards LED...but could easily be swayed since I'm not real sure about corals yet.

 

[MondoBongo]

most mushrooms and xenias should do just fine under the standard lighting. the kenya trees too should be alright.

i had 3 kenya trees come in as hitchhikers on my live rock. those things survived weeks of black out and toxic chemical swings during the cycle. as far as i am concerned, they are virtually indestructible.

that being said, that stock light won't make any of them look all that nice. i have a chalice and some red zoas in my QT tank right now under the standard hood mounted flourex, and they look a bit washed out and dull.

as far as LED's, i have some Ecoray's hanging over my tank now which seem to work pretty well, but are getting replaced within the next couple days (as soon as my order comes in) with AI Vegas. i am (im)patiently waiting for that.

i like the colors, controllability, energy savings, and low heat production of the LED's. when i first started the tank i had a 400w mogul based MH light hanging over it. it threw off an insane amount of light, and heated up to roughly the temperature of the surface of the sun. on warmer days it would easily cause a 3 degree rise in water temp, and considerable evaporation.

 

[sharij1]

I've had evaporation issues with my light...don't like that. Plus, the standard light doesn't show off the colors in my tank well. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg, but I do want my tank to look good and the lights to be appropriate for my little underwater world.

 

[FTDelta]

Hammer and Torch are good beginner corals.

 

[squishifishi]

just a note with LEDs, if you want to grow sps corals eventually, some people struggle to get good growth under LEDs, but it's still doable. in general though, LEDs are great for coral growth and my personal favorite lighting type!
your current light should be fine for all of the above mentioned softies.
good luck!

 

[sharij1]

Any good recs for leds for a 29 gallon tank? I don't want to go overboard with light, but don't want to under-do it and have a case of the wish-i-wouldas.

 

[WillM]

Keep in mind when you are stocking your tank with softies that in the very near future those same corals that are so easy to keep alive are going to be nearly impossible to get rid of. Certainly don't buy them unless they come attached to a big chunk of LR. Get on your local forum and find some good people that will give them to you. I just finished purging my tank of kenya tree, GSP, encrusting gorgonian, and most of the mushrooms. I still see that stuff cropping up crowding out my newer corals, so to avoid that mistake you might want to just start with some nice colorful zoas to begin with that you can sell/trade later instead of leathers, GSP, mushrooms, and kenya trees which you won't be able to give away more than likely and will have problems getting out of your tank later as well. Just a warning

As far as a LED fixture for a 29G tank: just make sure you dial them way way back and if you can borrow a PAR meter do that to measure the PAR so that you aren't roasting your tank with too much light. If pricing is an issue you might want to look at the Chinese D120s. I personally use two of these on my 75G tank and have had great SPS growth. Relatively cheap (~$160 shipped) and one should do it. If price isn't an option then get two Kessils (~$240 + shipping and two fixtures) or if you just want to truly blow money on your tank go then for the new Radion Pro (~$1000 with shipping and the extra rail kit they charge you for to mount it).

 

[WillM]

Hammer and Torch are good beginner corals.

They require calcium/alk and target feeding. I would put these as intermediate corals. If the OP is monitoring calcium/alk then yeah, these could be OK, but I kind of take from their post that they are not doing that currently (they only mentioned SG and Ph).

 

[sharij1]

Correct. i am just now researching corals and am starting at the very beginning. I have not been testing for calcium and alkalinity.

 

[sharij1]

Would T5s be better than LED then? Or what would be a decent light to use for some beginner coral growth in a 29G tank?

 

[WillM]

T5s can heat the tank, they will cost the same initially as the cheap LEDs I mentioned, and you will have to replace the bulbs at least annually. If you only anticipate keeping soft corals forever then T5s x 2 might be OK for most and a little cheaper, but if you plan on ever keeping any hard corals you are going to need at least T5x4 and possibly x6 to get the kind of light you need for SPS etc. I have a T5x4 over my 12" deep 33L and it barely keeps a monti alive that is 2" under the surface, so if there is any doubt in your mind that you'll want to ever keep hard corals I would go with a T5x6 or LEDs. I think a MH/T5 combo is overkill on your tank and will definitely cause heat issues, but I don't have any direct experience with using them. The money sucks to spend up front, but you might as well do it now and do it right or hold off until you can instead of spending less now on something that is just good enough and then having to spend a lot more again in the future when you want to upgrade.

 

[sharij1]

Thank you for the help!! I now need to just bite the bullet!

 

[amutti]

Duncans are really easy and will survive a lot of abuse. They need moderate light to thrive, but they will survive under CF or T5 bulbs.

 

[Jstdv8]

Keep in mind when you are stocking your tank with softies that in the very near future those same corals that are so easy to keep alive are going to be nearly impossible to get rid of. Certainly don't buy them unless they come attached to a big chunk of LR. Get on your local forum and find some good people that will give them to you. I just finished purging my tank of kenya tree, GSP, encrusting gorgonian, and most of the mushrooms. I still see that stuff cropping up crowding out my newer corals, so to avoid that mistake you might want to just start with some nice colorful zoas to begin with that you can sell/trade later instead of leathers, GSP, mushrooms, and kenya trees which you won't be able to give away more than likely and will have problems getting out of your tank later as well. Just a warning

As far as a LED fixture for a 29G tank: just make sure you dial them way way back and if you can borrow a PAR meter do that to measure the PAR so that you aren't roasting your tank with too much light. If pricing is an issue you might want to look at the Chinese D120s. I personally use two of these on my 75G tank and have had great SPS growth. Relatively cheap (~$160 shipped) and one should do it. If price isn't an option then get two Kessils (~$240 + shipping and two fixtures) or if you just want to truly blow money on your tank go then for the new Radion Pro (~$1000 with shipping and the extra rail kit they charge you for to mount it).

I had a chunk of GSP that came with my tank when i set it up a number of years ago. I think Ive got the answer to never having to worry about it overgrowing the tank.
I put it on a fairly round rock (actually the rock it came on i think) It has covered the entire top of the rock, but it does not grow down past the widest part of the rock (no light maybe I dunno) But corals always want to grow up not down.
So this rock is not touching any other rocks, its close, but not touching.
And Ive got an awesome patch of this GSP just waving around.
Occasionally it will try to finger out horizontaly, i just rip those fingers off when they get a couple inches long and bring them to the LFS or give them to other reefers.
I have to say the GSP is the star of my tank as far as non hobbiests are concerned.
I show them my patch of hornets or my big duncans or frog spawn but they always gravitate back to the GSP.

 

[sharij1]

oh no...now starting to think seriously about corals. this is going to break the bank! lol

 

[MondoBongo]

oh no...now starting to think seriously about corals. this is going to break the bank! lol

Not neccesarily. :fun2:

With a few exceptions I mostly buy frags for fairly cheap half the fun is watching them grow.

 

[cedwards04]

Great information here. i had no idea that any corals would grow under the stock lighting on cheap tanks. that's good info. can help people on a budget to at least get started and upgrade lighting when they are ready to step up to better corals.

 

[cap032]

Any good recs for leds for a 29 gallon tank? I don't want to go overboard with light, but don't want to under-do it and have a case of the wish-i-wouldas.

Maxspect Razor. You would probably be able to grow whatever you wanted to with the 20.5" model. Look through the thread in the sponsors forum under CoralVue.