Corals for beginners?

[afilter]

I am considering making the transition to reef and adding some "easy" lower light corals in the coming months once I finish upgrading my ligting.

Is there a corals for beginners article or sticky out there that I have missed?

I have been toying witht this idea for some time and have recieved a variety of advice at different LFS from you could try some leathers now to you must have nlt 5wpg of such and such lighting and add all these supplements.

I know there are many different opinions, but just looking for some bare bones advice for beginners to coral.

TIA,

 

[malkore]

from liveaquaria.com I bought yellow colony polyps, and fluorescent green mushsrooms. They've done fine in a 40gallon breeder with 2x96 watt PC's, half 10,000k, half actinic03.

I also added some kind of brown button polyp, and it's done well too.

my rose anemone, however, died in 3 weeks.

I find liveaquaria.com's light requirements and difficulty levels are pretty accurate, so you might wanna just browse around there a while. most mushrooms and soft corals aren't too hard to keep. However you only have 186watts over a 90? only 2wpg...not sure what you'll be able to keep with that level. Maybe some mushrooms...

 

[afilter]

Thanks, I definately plan to add more lighting before I do anything. Just want to get some facts first.

 

[Phyl]

I kept a lot of various corals under 4x65 over my 120 for about 6mo before changing to MH. Quite frankly a lot of them looked better under the 4x65! Xenia, frogspawn, orange cap, green cap, tricolor acropora, torch... to name a few. LPS seem to do pretty well under the PC lighting. I kept them pretty high in the tank. Your best bet, IMO is to get frags from fellow reefers. That way the corals in your tank are propagated, hardier and aren't killing off a part of the ocean should they not survive. Mushrooms & zoos should also do well for you.

 

[mfrei64]

You can go wrong with mushrooms, and one of my favorites is the colt coral....grows well, sways in the water and cool to look at with a mag glass.

I've always had great luck with euphelia...(frog spawn, torch, hammer) They can be spectacular.