newbie coral acquisition

[braytag]

Hi guys, I have a 55Gal 18" high with 4 xVHO 36", the tanks has been running for about 1 year, all water parameter are fine. I have a 150 seaclone skimmer, modified, and it works kind of ok for the tank. when I build my sump/fuge, I'll get a better one.

I have a lawnmower blenny,
3 chromis,
few hermits,
few turbo snails,
a clown
a dragonet
2 peppermint shrimp
and 2 cleaner shrimps.

I want to jump into corals, any good beginner species you can recommend?

hard or soft.

(I know it must have been answer quite a lot, sorry about it.)

 

[lvpd186]

Usually the leather corals are more forgiving and hardy. I would recomend a toadstool leather or something like that. You could also add mushrooms and GSP, both are good choises. Good luck.

 

[K-Dubbs]

As for softies-
Green Star Polyp (GSP) really easy, spread fast as hell. Liked it at first then it started growing too much, so now I try to kill it.

Xenia easy as well, spread fast also. Grows like a weed once it gets started, but getting it to work in your tank can be tricky. They have shipping problems a lot. I bought one first time and it ended up dying, got another later on and it is still spreading like a weed.

There are many kinds of mushroom corals, most of them are really easy. Riccordea mushrooms are my favorite but they are usually more expensive and they like higher light then most other mushrooms.

Zoanthids are also easy and will spread fairly fast.

There are various leather corals that are for the most part very hardy and fast growing.

As for LPS (Large polyp stony)
There are some things like hammer corals, frogspawns, plate corals, and the like which are in my experience hardy. I would stick to the softies for your first corals though, later on try these.

As for SPS (Small polpy stony)
A lot of these corals are picky about water conditions and lighting such as Acropora. I have found Montipora to be hardy, but I would reccomend you try some softies before adding one of these.

HTH,
K-Dubbs

 

[pistonfister]

I agree with both above posts. I would definetly recomend starting with soft corals

 

[braytag]

perfect, I shall try then one leather then I'll wait 2 weeks and if everything is ok, i'll get one Zoanthids.

You guys are the best

 

[K-Dubbs]

alright, good luck!