Populating a large tank

[travis32]

I have about 14 fish now in a 340 gallon tank with a 75 gallon sump.

1 black Tang
1 Rabbit fish
1 dragon wrasse
1 yellow wrasse
1 Royal Gramma
3 Powder blue tangs
2 Black Ocellaris Clown fish
1 Blue dotted Shrimp Goby
3 Pajama Cardinals

How do you well, economically, populate it with corals? I've got a mix of LPS and SPS now, and looking to expand heavily, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars on corals with funky names. Would just like average pretty frags, maybe a larger colony or two show piece and so on. Obviously I'll buy frags over time. But, is there an efficient way to populate a large tank and not have it look empty.

It's only been active 4 months, and I have a cyano cycle going on right now that may take 2-4 months to resolve, but, just looking for recommendations on what others have done, or is one stuck paying thousands to buy a couple hundred frags of stuff to populate this size of tank?

 

[Khazmodain]

It takes time.. I still feel like my 400g looks fairly bare after 2.5 years. Do you live in an area with an active local reefing club? Frag shows and local club members have been one of my favorite sources for reasonably priced frags.

 

[travis32]

The local club is not so active. heh. The closest active club is Minneapolis (250 miles), which I plan to go to their next Frag show event in April. But yeah, I've got probably 10 coral frags, and although the SPS show signs of good growth, it's sloooooooooooooooow.

 

[Bono]

Try craigslist. I've found quite a few people with 2-3 year old tanks that lose interest and sell everything. With my 210 gal I was able to make an offer on the entire contents of a 75 gal for instance and fill my tank pretty fast. You can usually strick a good deal because the owner doesn't need to sell individual pieces to multiple people.

 

[o2manyfish]

All those overpriced little nubs of color... Big deal. How often do you see a full colony of one of those rainbow $1k frags that still looks like a million dollar frag pile.

Get a rainbow of corals, cheap, free, borrowed, traded and let them grow. A fully mature reef is gorgeous. When you have mature colonies, you have a reef tank.

When you have $10k worth of sticks stuck to your front glass... you got nothin.

Check out the webcam on my 400g -- www.o2manyfish.com/webcam --- you look and tell me which colonies were expensive and which colonies weren't ----

Dave B

 

[Andrew D]

All those overpriced little nubs of color... Big deal. How often do you see a full colony of one of those rainbow $1k frags that still looks like a million dollar frag pile.

Get a rainbow of corals, cheap, free, borrowed, traded and let them grow. A fully mature reef is gorgeous. When you have mature colonies, you have a reef tank.

When you have $10k worth of sticks stuck to your front glass... you got nothin.

Check out the webcam on my 400g -- www.o2manyfish.com/webcam --- you look and tell me which colonies were expensive and which colonies weren't ----

Dave B

Here here! Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

Plenty of the cheaper corals look great, and often grow faster anyways. Birdsnest and Monti Caps, IMO, will grow very fast and fill alot of space pretty economically and look great. I have a few colonies that are 12+" that started from 1" frags after just a few years. Too often I see posts of people that bought one of the $300 tiny designer sticks and are happy to see an inch of growth after a year. IMO, those coral are better suited for people with a very nice small tank where you can get up close and personal and enjoy a few small corals. For a large tank, I'd focus on economical and fast growing. You can also try softies, but be careful as some are known to be a pain to control once they start growing too large...cough...green star polyps...cough.

 

[lapin]

I have a 600g and its pretty bare after a year. I try to just buy form locals giving up the hobby or making room for other stuff.