Favorite Colors (corals) and Flowies

[Dustin07]

I don't know a better way to pose the topic
I always think I'm going to overly clutter my tank, then I see a beautiful display tank somewhere and realize they have 4x the coral life in there compared to what I have. The corals are huge, bright, beautiful, then I come home to my 40g and it looks absolutely sparse (which I need to get some better pics for my log).

I think I have around 30 growing frags or more, in my tank and it could probably use 50% more rock still, and triple the coral life. But at least I'm learning what corals seem to pop the most on our redsea 50s.

We love our nems, great color, some flow.
Our frogspawn is pretty, and growing well.
Our bubble coral is pretty when fully inflated, although a little boring.
Our GSP is absolutely amazing and our 1" frag is now about 7" x 3"+.
I have obviously a ton of cloves, zoas, and palys which I love, but I need more colors and would love more "flowy" type corals like the GSP and hammer.

Any advice? greens and oranges are really looking good under our lights. we have too many sorta bland browns/reds/maroons I think.

 

[griss]

Ricordea Florida are awesome corals. I love those.

What about some Gorgonians?

I'm more of an SPS guy but I do like R. Florida and Gorgs.

 

[reefing102]

One of the best flowy corals in my opinion is torches. And with the right lights can get some good colors. There also a long tentacle toadstool (though colors vary depending on lighting).

There’s also Xenia

 

[Dustin07]

I love Ricordia, almost picked up a beautiful orange one last week but it was already claimed so they are on the list! Gorgonians are a must, it's one of the few that are considered safe for seahorses to hitch to I believe. I'll be keeping my eyes open for a nice one for the DT as well.

I agree on torches. We only have the one right now, which was $50. I will likely be keeping my eyes open for another good Torch and a Duncan, but I didn't even think about a long tentacle toadstool. that's a good idea!

I have some purple pulsating xenia now, I love it but I need to see if I can find a different color.
I'm going to work on getting better tank update pics this weekend with my wifes camera, I think it will take much better pictures.

we have an area of the tank we call the elephant graveyard. it's mostly just xenia and cloves growing like crazy but with very muted colors so I really want to give it a big splash of color...

 

[reefing102]

There’s also Anthelia. But it’s similar in look and feel to Xenia (just a bit longer and flowier)

 

[Dustin07]

the anthelia is gorgeous. the funny thing is the first pics I pulled up are all that purply maroony color that 1/3 of our tank is now:

 

[Dustin07]

The thing that broke me was my GSP growing so well lately since I started target feeding it, plus the new nem have added such great splashes of colors it has me looking for more!

 

[griss]

I love Ricordia, almost picked up a beautiful orange one last week but it was already claimed so they are on the list! Gorgonians are a must, it's one of the few that are considered safe for seahorses to hitch to I believe. I'll be keeping my eyes open for a nice one for the DT as well.

If you want nice Ricordea and Gorgonians, you can't go wrong with KP aquatics. Reeftopia also has some in stock usually but, they don't have as much variety as KP.