Advice on Corals please??

[DanS180]

Okay i have my 16 Gallon BowFront cycling as we speak, i know i have a little bit of time before i start adding fish and whatnot. Just planning or exploring my options i guess. Tank has 15lbs of Live rock. Tank Dimensions are :
20" L X 13" D x 18" H.

Now bare with me, this is my first SW tank and i know nothing about Corals.

I plan on buying a Coralife Mini 11" T5 only bc it fits my budget. People that i have asked said i could do Polyps and Mushrooms which im okay with since i know nothing about corals.

my questions are:
which ones would go good together?
how do i keep them seperated in such a small tank?
as they grow, is there a way to "trim" them??

any information would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thanks!!!

 

[crister13]

You won't be able to keep and corals under that unless they were non photosynthetic which are very difficult to keep. I would get a 2-4 bulb T5 then you could keep LPS at the top and shrooms and zoas on the bottom. You can just cut soft corals and zoas and mushrooms.

 

[DanS180]

You won't be able to keep and corals under that unless they were non photosynthetic which are very difficult to keep. I would get a 2-4 bulb T5 then you could keep LPS at the top and shrooms and zoas on the bottom. You can just cut soft corals and zoas and mushrooms.

Well the coralife T5 is a 2 bulb fixture.. that wouldn't work??

 

[crister13]

Hmmm........how many watts??? Maybe you'll keep shrooms and zoas but only directly under the lights. Not in the sides of the tank.

 

[Rutrag]

I think you should be fine for mushrooms, zoas, and some softies under that light since it is a smaller tank. I suggest buying frags as opposed to established colonies and letting them grow in. It also will cost you a LOT less!

As far as varieties, I don't think there are any varieties of mushrooms that are that difficult. Ricordeas and yumas seem to be a little brighter.

On zoas, I don't think you can beat the color to price ratio of eagle eyes. (Orange, blue, and yellowish green) Green Bay Packers are nice as well (green with orange mouths).

If you want to move to softies, Xenia is a very easy one as is Kenya tree coral. Many people dislike these because they can grow so fast.

If your corals grow larger than you like, they can be fragged pretty easily. There are different techniques used for the different varieties, but the basic idea is like pruning a plant. There are lots of folks who trade frags and you might could trade some to your LFS for credit. There are lots of videos on YouTube that walk you through how to do it. Do wear latex or nitrile gloves when you frag zoas or palythoas.

 

[DanS180]

Hmmm........how many watts??? Maybe you'll keep shrooms and zoas but only directly under the lights. Not in the sides of the tank.

I believe its 18W total but I'm not positive :/

 

[DanS180]

I think you should be fine for mushrooms, zoas, and some softies under that light since it is a smaller tank. I suggest buying frags as opposed to established colonies and letting them grow in. It also will cost you a LOT less!

As far as varieties, I don't think there are any varieties of mushrooms that are that difficult. Ricordeas and yumas seem to be a little brighter.

On zoas, I don't think you can beat the color to price ratio of eagle eyes. (Orange, blue, and yellowish green) Green Bay Packers are nice as well (green with orange mouths).

If you want to move to softies, Xenia is a very easy one as is Kenya tree coral. Many people dislike these because they can grow so fast.

If your corals grow larger than you like, they can be fragged pretty easily. There are different techniques used for the different varieties, but the basic idea is like pruning a plant. There are lots of folks who trade frags and you might could trade some to your LFS for credit. There are lots of videos on YouTube that walk you through how to do it. Do wear latex or nitrile gloves when you frag zoas or palythoas.

Wow lots of great information!! Thanks a lot!!

Have a silly question tho and I might just be over thinking this but.. when/if I buy a frag, how do I go about putting it in the tank? Does it attach itself to a rock or do I attach it myself?

 

[CorallineAlgae]

If you're going with easy to keep corals in this tank you should only have 2 fish max. Zoas and mushrooms should do relatively okay. If you skip the actinic bulb and put a brighter light in the second slot, like a 12000-14000K (to still get a nice blue look) you may be able to keep other corals like toadstool leathers and xenia.

I know people will hammer me for saying that, but I kept a 10 gallon filled with corals years ago with only 3x15 watt T8s. That tank got overgrown with coralline algae, mushrooms, leathers and xenia and ran for years. You really should be able to do it. What'll make it difficult would be (among other things) having to many fish.

 

[Jacobsal91]

Well the coralife T5 is a 2 bulb fixture.. that wouldn't work??

Mushroom corals arent a very high demmanding coral. Its all about
Location of the tank and how close they are to the lights. I have yellow colony polyps that were under a FW light when i bought them. They were there for
Months.. Bought the rock with 5 polyps on it, now theres 31 under compact bulbs that came with my tank.. Dont really know what they are they came stock with an aquapod 12g which is a discontinued model. Point im making is they were under FW lights for like 3 months and still alive.. Maybe that was a miracle lol

 

[DanS180]

If you're going with easy to keep corals in this tank you should only have 2 fish max. Zoas and mushrooms should do relatively okay. If you skip the actinic bulb and put a brighter light in the second slot, like a 12000-14000K (to still get a nice blue look) you may be able to keep other corals like toadstool leathers and xenia.

I know people will hammer me for saying that, but I kept a 10 gallon filled with corals years ago with only 3x15 watt T8s. That tank got overgrown with coralline algae, mushrooms, leathers and xenia and ran for years. You really should be able to do it. What'll make it difficult would be (among other things) having to many fish.

Well I wasn't going to be adding too many fish anyways to be honest and I might only get 1 or 2 corals for the time being so I'm not sure, just exploring my options but thanks for your advice, I'll def take into consideration

 

[DanS180]

Mushroom corals arent a very high demmanding coral. Its all about
Location of the tank and how close they are to the lights. I have yellow colony polyps that were under a FW light when i bought them. They were there for
Months.. Bought the rock with 5 polyps on it, now theres 31 under compact bulbs that came with my tank.. Dont really know what they are they came stock with an aquapod 12g which is a discontinued model. Point im making is they were under FW lights for like 3 months and still alive.. Maybe that was a miracle lol

Sounds like it was lol.. I wish I could use the T5 light I have for my FW tank for my SW... the plants in my FW tank are growing amazingly

 

[DanS180]

Back to putting the corals in the tank.. not sure if anyone saw that question. Do they attach themselves to the LR or do I have to manually do that? And I'm assuming you would acclimate these as if they were fish right??

 

[Sniperhank]

I glue all of my corals down to pieces of rock. That way I can move them around my tank as they adjust to the light (start all coral in the sandbed and move them up as they adjust to light) or I just need to move things around to make room for more coral.

To acclimate coral, treat it like an invert rather than a fish. Drip acclimate it.

 

[DanS180]

I glue all of my corals down to pieces of rock. That way I can move them around my tank as they adjust to the light (start all coral in the sandbed and move them up as they adjust to light) or I just need to move things around to make room for more coral.

To acclimate coral, treat it like an invert rather than a fish. Drip acclimate it.

Okay I've never done the drip method.. care to fill me in? Lol (or maybe I just don't know that's what its called lol)

 

[Sniperhank]

Basically, you will be slowly changing the water that the coral came into to the parameters in your tank. You can do this by placing the coral into a container and either putting loose knots in a piece of airline tubing and having it drip water from your tank into your coral's container over the period of an hour or 2 or adding a shot glass of water from your tank every 15 min.

 

[DanS180]

Basically, you will be slowly changing the water that the coral came into to the parameters in your tank. You can do this by placing the coral into a container and either putting loose knots in a piece of airline tubing and having it drip water from your tank into your coral's container over the period of an hour or 2 or adding a shot glass of water from your tank every 15 min.

So basically you'd be mixing the water it came in with water from your own tank?

 

[DanS180]

And what kind of glue? Is that the only way to do it?

 

[Jacobsal91]

So basically you'd be mixing the water it came in with water from your own tank?

Yes, but slowly, and i wouldnt reccoment putting the water that you dripped back in the tank afterwards. Just my personal doing. Top it off with new RO salt water if possible/nessasary. And as for glue, most LFS's sell something called 'reef glue', quite a few different brands of it they all work pretty well

 

[DanS180]

Yes, but slowly, and i wouldnt reccoment putting the water that you dripped back in the tank afterwards. Just my personal doing. Top it off with new RO salt water if possible/nessasary. And as for glue, most LFS's sell something called 'reef glue', quite a few different brands of it they all work pretty well

So after acclimating just take it out of the container and put it in the tank?? Don't reuse any of the water

 

[Sniperhank]

Bingo. As for glue, anything that is 100% cyanoacalade...it's something like that.