What Corals do well in a high light area

Warhood

New member
Hello. I have a new tank (5ish months at this point I think) and have been having problems keeping corals alive on a rock in the middle of my tank. It is low evalation in the tank, and right in the center. I've tried two corals on the rock (A hammer and a Candy Cane), the hammer died, and the Candy Cane almost died.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any corals that would do well in well lit areas of the tank. Right now I have two monti's on the rock, and they are not showing signs of positive or negative affects.

The rock in question is circled below, unfortunately it seems as if I had to resize the photo to get it to upload so the whole thing looks squished in. (Also any tips to uploading proper pictures to the site would be much appreciated as I have failed at uploading pictures more times than succeeded).

Thanks for the Advice,
Warhood
 

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1) Use Flickr. Much better than attaching photos.

2) What are your parameters? 5 months is a little young but not bad.
 
Parameters are usually:

Temperature: 76-78
Nitrate: 0~
Phosphate 0~
Salt: 1.022-1.023 (Normally it is 1.024-1.026, but I just put fresh RODI water in to top off the stump, will be adding more salt tomorrow)
PH: 7.7~8
Calcium: 300 PPM (I think, thats what the test has been telling me)
Carbonite 214+ (It could be just super concentrated I adjusted the PH earlier in the day with a buffer).

The only two things I put into the tank at this point is: Apitisa-X and Ken Super Marine Ph and dKh buffer.

I hope also these numbers are well, never really known what are the proper ranges for the new tank. All the animals and corals in the tank seem to be thriving/doing very well.
 
Stony corals need certain parameters in spec, and they need to be STABLE.

Problems I see:

S.G. Needs to be 1.026 and stable, not fluctuating between 1.022-26
Ca needs to be 400 ppm instead of 300.
Carbonite 214? I assume this is alkalinity of 214 ppm. This equals about 12 dKH, which is way too high. Needs to be 8 dKH. It's probably from the "buffer" you are adding.
 
The salt isn't an issue, just a rookie mistake that I did not have any Salt water set aside for drip acclimating a new creature I bought today. Normally it is a stable 1.026 if I did it.

How would you suggest raising the Ca in the tank? Is there a natural method or is this now me needing Ca supplements.

And I guess need to balance the PH another way.
 
Don't bother messing with PH. If you have a skimmer you could run a C02 scrubber, but otherwise don't try changing it. Buffer is a temporary fix that only serves to spike dkh like you see now. As for calcium, a tank that new shouldn't need supplements if you do water changes. If you're not doing water changes then get a calcium supplement.
 
I just moved down from 2 water changes a week to 1 change a week, with one tank cleaning a week. I am still trying to wrestle with the idea of 2 water changes or 1 water change.

As for yeah, I'll retest dKH in a couple of days to see if it comes down to a more stable left before making a move either way, I try to avoid adding multiple things a week anyway, and added something today.
 
What light is that?
Looks like a low cost LED fixture from Amazon/Ebay which would not be "high light" even in a shallow tank..
Its unlikely that your problems with your other corals were from too much light..

Its also unlikely that your calcium test result is accurate with the amount of water changes you seem to be doing and an alk of 12dkh....
What salt are you using?
Or it is and your incorrect usage of the buffer is causing elevated alk
 
The Light is a Coralife LED Aqualight T5.

For the Calcium tested I won't know, though the last time I did a Water Change was almost a week ago (I usually change on Saturday)

I actually don't know what salt I am using, I still don't feel comfortable mixing my own water so I have been getting my RODI and Salter water from my Aquarium Shop. So I'd assume the water (which is used from the whole shop) is pretty high quality.

The buffer issue is probably because like I said earlier, I had used the buffer in the tank hours before getting asked the question and testing.
 
I never trust LFS for water... or
Much of the time advice.

Make your own great water , then you KNOW the quality.
 
What params work well for hammer: salinity 1.025, 8.3 alk, 79 temp, 420 cal, 1350 mag, nitrate under 10, with a current that tosses the tentacles gently.
 
Just gonna toss this out there too..
I just lost 10 heads on my frogspawn..
My lfs and his friend both had unexplained hammer and torch deaths...(both own show quality tanks apon tanks) and I've noticed a trend on the Facebook pages I follow.. alot of euphilia (sp) are dieing here recently..

I kinda wonder if it's not an environmental issue..winter did just hit and everyone is running furnaces

Sent from my SM-G930VL using Tapatalk
 
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