New to SPS: beginner's guide?

[flyhigh123]

I'm new to SPS. Yes I am.

I am planning out my tank, which is a 200 gallon.

It's fully running, cycled, etc.

I won't be adding sps for another few months, but from now until then, I'm trying to plan out the tank in terms of placement.

Is there a guide or can we create a guide teaching new people like me, the basics to placement and SPS types.

I've seen some amazing sps tanks and it seems like placement and future planning is key, like where to put a table sps, or staghorn, etc.

Maybe we can make an internal guidelist similar to other stickies i've seen.

What I mean is for example:

Green Staghorn Acropora
Care Level: Easy in SPS tank!
Lighting Requirements: High- Metal Halides
Placement: Mid tank to high
Water Flow: High
Aggressiveness: Peaceful
Family: Acroporidae
Growth Style: Multiple branches, better to be placed up top for long term growth

 

[pdaooc]

That would be great info for newbies like me too. I'm setting up a sps-dominate tank too. Water parameters as of yesterday: Alk 9.0, salinity 1.025, Ca 350 ppm, Mg 1200 ppm.

 

[Denadai]

Hi Guys,

I´m writing a simple guide to keep a healthy SPS tank

I think I ´m going to post the guide in the next weekend

Best regards

 

[pdaooc]

Ok, thanks in advance.

 

[flyhigh123]

great! I'm not as much worried on tank parameters as that info is abundant. I more so want to learn about the unique attributes of each SPS type.

Like, I would hate to put staghorn lower in my tank, just to see is explode in growth and cover up other sps corals in the future. I've read that staghorns are better up top as their growth patterns sometimes become pesky.

Also, like where is a good place to put tabling acros etc?

I know all SPS likes high flow, but maybe we can have some sort of chart meaning (yes high flow, but in a tank, it can be put in lesser of a flow but still considered high) like a flow chart 1-10 with 1, being minimum high flow and 10 being super high flow.

This can also help reduce the bandwidth taken up in the id forum as many questions here and there seem to be from newbies like me.