Sun coral tank ideas

[ECEKatko]

I'm in the process of setting up a 10G assorted sun coral tank which will probably have a goby/shrimp pair in it as well. So far the tank's been setup with no higher life for about 2 months and the pods/bristleworms love it. I have a small amount of chaeto in the tank which will stay there and be harvested as needed so the pods can keep growing when the corals are there. What do you think about using just actinics round the clock, to make it like the underside of a reef, with a spot light on the chaeto or an aquafuge? I'm still debating making it skimmerless or not, and how much flow I'd like.

I guess the reasons I put it in this forum are twofold:
Do a lot of people leave a tank fallow for months before adding any corals/fish/inverts? How do you think this would go with non-photosynthetic corals? And
What about a dim lighting for the tank without bright daylight at any time? The actinics would make the life pop and I'm thinking help the shrimp pair to be a little less shy.

Sound like sound ideas for this kind of tank?

 

[poedag]

this sounds like a very cool species tank, but with sun coral you need to target feed them so much that i would think skimerless would be a bad idea. i'm not sure what the PAR of the actinics would be, but i grow chaeto in my fuge under a 28w power saver PC and it seems to be growing fairly well and doing it's job. cool idea i'll see what other ideas i can come up with

 

[parothead22]

You definitely want to go with a skimmer as poedag stated! Target feeding is a must for the continued success and growth of your Tubastrea sp. The do well with brine or mysis shrimp feeding. Slow water flow is beneficial and regarding light, they are aposymbiotic(don't require light as they don't have zooxanthellae) so you don't need to have a strong lighting system.

 

[ECEKatko]

I knew that they were non-photosynthetic, and I think I will go with a skimmer. I guess I was wondering more about whether there would be any negative effects from just using actinics, without any daylight bulbs. I'm looking at tubastreas, goby/shrimp pair, and I don't know what else. Any other nice aposymbiotic corals? I'm thinking the only negatives could come with the goby/shrimp, but I'm not sure. I'm fascinated by the Environmental Gradient cryptic zone, but I haven't seen a lot of info about a cryptic mini-reef.

 

[parothead22]

Dendronepthya and many Gorgonians aren't symbiotic! Very colorful as well!

 

[nmprisons]

with many gorgonians, you would need some serious feeding of plankton ... i imagine that in such a small tank you would end up having some parameter issues.

 

[Dani Arnanz]

Parothead, you forgot to say that gonios and dendros are almost impossible to keep alive for long time.

ECEKatko great idea!!! I had a "dark reef", but with some tubastreas, dendrophyllia, scleronephtya, nephytogorgia... too many work to feed with fito for the slero, mysis and artemia for the dendrophylliids, rotifer for nephyto... That´s why I think the best is to work only with tubastrea and dendrophyllia.

Good luck!

 

[nautilus808]

I think you will get some alage problems
(brown ) if using nothing but atinics

 

[Serioussnaps]

run a DSB in it if you can...also a GFO....lighting doesnt matter...some actinics is what i did with them on a 15 G fuge..kept my sun's in it with actinics only

 

[kizkiz]

Shrimp have a nasty habit of stealing the food from the sun corals
you'd spend half your life chasing them away with a big stick

 

["Umm fish?"]

I would re-think the flow you're planning. I think you need a ton of flow to keep all of the detrius that'll happen suspended in the water column so it can get to the skimmer. Also, with a ton of in-tank flow, you can turn off any return pump from a sump or the pump to the skimmer and just feed the tank. That would save you a ton of effort over trying to hand-feed every polyp. (And remember, it's every polyp that needs food. They don't share.)

Other than that, if you are willing to do massive water changes often (and it's only 10g.), it sounds like a wonderful idea!

 

["Umm fish?"]

I'm sorry. I just re-read and you were not the one who suggested low-flow. I still think high-flow is a good idea, though.

If you read the dendronephthea thread, you'll see that the current recommendations for flow for those corals is about 6 inches per second, which is pretty darn fast.

 

[ECEKatko]

Agreed. I'm thinking I'll start with the shrimp pair and a couple orange Tubastreas, then add a black Tubastrea or two. I'll let that be an experiment before trying any of the dendros. Flow at the moment comes from a MJ900 powering the skimmer (Remora Nano) and some other generic powerhead that I don't remember the number off the top of my head. I'm not going to run a sump on it, and I haven't decided about the DSB. The only problem with a DSB is how much it lowers the water volume in a 10G compared to an inch of sand, say.

I'm probably going to leave the tank fallow for another month or two with no lights but actinics to see how that affects everything. I'd think that with the amount of food I'd be putting in I could grow some sponges pretty well, in addition to the other things. Not the orange ornamental ones or anything like that, but some cryptic-colored ones that wouldn't have to compete with algae.

 

["Umm fish?"]

You might think about the "DSB in a bucket" thing. That would probably be perfect for something like this.