my first frags

[paulweck]

Was at my lfs the other day and bought 2 frags for $7 per frag. One Is a small colony of polpys and the second one is what I think is a trumpet or a candy cane coral. It wasn't listed. And the guy working don't really know for sure. Heres is few pics

 

[paulweck]

I have a few questions about dosing iodine and Strontium and Molybdenum. I realize with the little amount of corals I have now its not really needed due to my weekly 20% pwc. But as I add more corals I will see my levels change quicker then I can do pwc. So I wanna be prepared for when I need to start dosing and what actually need and what is unesaccery. I plan on starting out with soft and LPS corals and then when I upgrade my lighting I will wanna get in to sps.

Does anybody have any good links or personal opinions they can give me on where to start out

 

[Patrick93]

I'd recommend Kent products and zoo's love iodine what salt do you use?

 

[Ausfish]

I'd recommend you upgrade your lighting before you get too many corals. If your upgrading from weak to very strong lights your corals might get stressed or bleach.
Edit:nice corals by the way and sooo cheap!

 

[paulweck]

I'm using instaocean reef crystals. And as for my future lighting upgrade I will be adding led stunned strips to my 4 bulb t5ho fixture. But I will be adding them slowly and using dimmers as to not burn up Any corals and slowly get them used to the new light

 

[Patrick93]

Planning on sps? And reef crystals is what I use they have a good amount of trace elements

 

[paulweck]

I would like to down the road. I'm still trying to figure out if I can by adding leds to my current fixture. I was planning on adding 2 36" stunned strips but don't know if that will be enough.

 

[Gregcoyote]

I have tons of SPS and use reef crystals myself. I have three automatic dosing pumps, one doses Kalkwasser at night only, one doses B-Ionic two part and the last one doses a tiny bit of Kent Essential Elements continuously. That is all I use as well as a 15% water change every other week. My chalice corals are growing fast enough you can almost see it.

 

[Patrick93]

I have tons of SPS and use reef crystals myself. I have three automatic dosing pumps, one doses Kalkwasser at night only, one doses B-Ionic two part and the last one doses a tiny bit of Kent Essential Elements continuously. That is all I use as well as a 15% water change every other week. My chalice corals are growing fast enough you can almost see it.

Sounds like a awesome tank

 

[AquaRick]

I have tons of SPS and use reef crystals myself. I have three automatic dosing pumps, one doses Kalkwasser at night only, one doses B-Ionic two part and the last one doses a tiny bit of Kent Essential Elements continuously. That is all I use as well as a 15% water change every other week. My chalice corals are growing fast enough you can almost see it.

What's the reservoir on each of the 3 dosing pumps? Wondering what kind of volume I might need someday for corals.

 

[Gregcoyote]

My reef is 300 gallons total, so I have bought (on eBay of course) some 2 liter glass chemical bottles. This makes it easy to see the levels rather than plumb a opaque plastic bottle and it looks cool. Medical grade dosing pumps (eBay again) deliver the micro doses continuously. The Kalkwasser is added in a home made Kalkwasser stirrer using a timed air pump delivery system. The chemical reservoirs last about 2 weeks on the dosing pumps and about a week on the Kalkwasser stirrer. I don't think Kalkwasser stores very well, so I turn that over pretty quickly.

 

[paulweck]

thanks for the info i was planning on using kalk along with my ato. witch is recommend by BRS. but when it comes down to dosing anything else i wanna be shore i know what will benefit my corals.

does anybody know a good led lighting upgrade so can house sps with my 4 bulb 156w t5ho fixture . i really like the stunner strip Ecoxotic Stunner LED Strip - 8,000K White - 18W - 36 in. | LED Lighting | Lighting Systems | Aquarium - ThatPetPlace.com
what do u guys think about these and how many do u think i will need

 

[Gregcoyote]

thanks for the info i was planning on using kalk along with my ato. witch is recommend by BRS. but when it comes down to dosing anything else i wanna be shore i know what will benefit my corals.

does anybody know a good led lighting upgrade so can house sps with my 4 bulb 156w t5ho fixture . i really like the stunner strip Ecoxotic Stunner LED Strip - 8,000K White - 18W - 36 in. | LED Lighting | Lighting Systems | Aquarium - ThatPetPlace.com
what do u guys think about these and how many do u think i will need

I look at the total wattage. A conservative number is 2:1 which would mean you would want to get a LED fixture made up of at least 1 watt LEDs that total 70-80 watts. That is a comparison to a 156 watt HO fixture. Many folks believe using higher powered LEDs it is closer to 3:1.

I like 10,000k whites making up 2/3 of them and the rest actinic blue for SPS corals. But these are just basic parameters.