What are good beginer SPS corals

mchammer

Member
I built a new 120 gallon tank one year ago today and after four months I stocked my tank with all SPS and just a few zoos from my old tank and I lost almost every one of my SPS. I built this tank to be an SPS tank but I must be doing something wrong. I've been reefing for 7 years now so I have a good grasp at the basics. I've learned a lot from this site. My acros died. My super man monti is just starting to come back and my brain coral is hanging on by it's finger nails. If you go to my profile you will see the corals I bought, I'm not sure if they qualify as easy or hard to keep corals.
 
I'm assuming your old tank was still up and running while the new tank was up and settling in? What are the parameters of both tanks? What's the difference in the setups (lighting, filtration, dosing, etc)? There are a lot of factors that can come into play.

Personally, I find that my staghorns are my hardiest SPS corals. As for general beginner SPS corals, I always tend to recommend caps, digis, or birdsnest. I find that that these pieces are inexpensive and usually do well for most reefers.
 
Id also throw encrusting montis in there. When i had a nutrient spike a while back everything looked like crap, except my montis were still super bright.
 
What kind of lights do you have? What are your systems parameters?

If you have a SPS quality tank, then anything from ORA is pretty easy. If you have a sub-standard SPS quality tank, then stick with some digi, birdsnest and some monti caps.
 
The info on my current tank is 120 gallons. My lighting is 2 250W MH with 20K radium bulbs and two 54W True Actinic T5. I only test twice a month before water changes and the last reading was SG-1.27 Phosphate-0.00 Alkalinity-7.84 Calcium-480 Magnesium-1440. I was getting wild swings in alkalinity and calcium but that was due to my adjusting the two part dosing after every test to bring up or down the Alk or calcium. Since I have such little amounts of coral I just change 10% of my total water every two weeks and everything seems to be doing fine. I would like to add more corals but I'm leery of wasting any more money. That's why I posted this question. My other tank was a 55 gallon with T5 and everything grew great. I had various types of monti's and a stag horn which grew very well. I also had zoos and mushrooms and green star polyps which took over the tank and that is why I want just SPS corals they are easier to maintain so they don't take over the tank.
 
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