what corals for beginners

i would suggest zoanthinds and button polyps, mushrooms, and you could try an easy species of xenia. just google image search pulsing xenia and youll get tons of pictures. all of the pics on the first page are species of xenia. xenia tend to grow like weeds for me
 
Looks like he is pointing you in the right direction. my first choice would be zoanthids or palythoas. Most are really easy to keep and you can find some sweet colors
 
Another thing to keep in mind is the future. I'm having a hell of a time controlling mushrooms in my tank. It's a 5-7 year tank and I'm moving towards LPS/SPS mainly and I'm stuck scrapping shrooms off my rocks every couple of months with s SCREWDRIVER. It's pretty bad. And You'll have a bad AND dangerous time getting rids of Zoanthids if you don't want them later. Keep these things under control from the get go. Or don't mess with shrooms at least. Zoanthids tend to spread locally. Shrooms float around and spread all over.
 
all good advice. I also recommend leathers and kenya trees. coral spreading out of control is not a bad thing imo. just means its time to make some frags and trade or sell them.
 
yeah i already have a zoa and unknown that has been named many things including fingerleather and kenya tree
 
Zoas and mushrooms. Frog spawn and Hammer Coral.

Xenia will spread fast. Sometimes too fast. Be careful
 
Green Star Polyps, toadstools and sinularia are also pretty easy. The Green Star Polyps can also grow like crazy so don't buy a bunch.
 
I agree with frogspawn and hammer, add candycane to that list. I would personally stay away from anything that is considered invasive. It will seem neato at first that its spreading across your rocks, until you cant stop it. These would include xenia, mushrooms, cloves, gsp, kenia, to name a few.
 
Careful with the zoanthids man, they make Palytoxin...which is one of...perhaps 'the' most potent toxin science knows of. It basically destroys the ion pump that keeps all your nerve cells (and every other cell in your body) going.

Not something you want to mess with. There are cases in which dogs and pets take a drink of tank water and die. Sure, lots of people keep them...but it doesn't mean that it is a good idea.
 
All of those things will do fine in moderate lighting. I found that , even with HQI's, shrooms/xenia/zoanthids/etc. all move up as high as they can get. I had pulsating xenia (which is cool to watch a big clump of it go) float from the highest rock to the glass so they could go up to the edge of the water line. So they are all pretty tolerant of diff. light and flow setups.

There was a guy here once that was breaking his rocks down and his dogs face was in a bucket and got squirted by zoanthids. Killed the dog and put him in the hospital something bad like... he got hit by a "man of war"? jelly. I've scrapped them off of rocks before to move them. I was really nervous about it but I just handled them very gently. You could also wear a mask/goggles. Zoanthids are some of the most colorful and easy corals you can play with. I would rank them the hardest of the easiest stuff though.

I'm throwing away a dead SPS rock with some xenia on it now. I don't want nothing to do with them, or shrooms. Maybe if they were pulsating xenia I might try them again?
 
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