Corals for beginners

[fish farmer]

Favias and LPS in general are easy as well but if you’re looking for the easiest corals to get started, I’ve found mushrooms, zoas, toadstools, xenia, Kenya tree, GSP, etc to be the easiest. With all these softies, I would resist all temptations and put them on their own rock/island. They spread like wildfires and very hard to control!

One thing worth mentioning about brain corals is they do have sweeper tentacles, so give them some room. They tend to be slow growers so a small frag would probably work in a corner of a 10 gallon for awhile.

 

[LaloJ]

Bubble coral out for a 10gal. Too big, too aggressive.

Great Softies for beginners:
1. GSP (put it on an island or get the branching GSP variety)
2. Rhodactis mushrooms
3. Pulsing xenia stricly on an island; in a 10gal I would weigh heavily decision to add
4. Toadstools
5. Zoanthids
6. Palythoas--keep separated on islands/easy maintenance areas depending on variants (e.g., nuclear green palys will overrun everything if you don't keep them separated. Ditto with pandoras aka fairy dust aka cinnamon apples)
7. Cloves

Great LPS for beginners:
1. Duncan (hit or miss, but generally good canary in a gold mine to tell you if something is off)
2. Trumpet/Candy Cane (Caulastrea)
3. Favias / Blastos / Acans, when you get a bit more comfortable and have mid-light/mid-flow spots to place them

Great SPS for beginners:
1. Pavonas --> beware the "hairy/cactus" pavona, which allegedly can be very invasive
2. Cephastreas --> careful for placement as they can encrust to the point of invasiveness
3. Birds nest / styplophora, when you get more comfortable

Great Nems for beginners:
1. Rock Flower Anemones, aka RFAs

Great macroalgae for beginners:
1. Codium
2. Botrycladia
3. Gracilaria hayi aka pom pom Gracilaria

All of the above depends on how you set up and run your tank. Live rock is going to give you a major boost. Water changes in a 10g are pretty easy to do or even automate. Algae control methods affect your corals.

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Easy corals NOT recommended:
1. Kenya trees--drop trees, spread everywhere
2. Pocciliopora--if unlucky, can get the type that spread by dropping polyps and get everywhere
3. Discosomas--in my experience, can be hard to keep in one place; let loose and float around to other parts of tank

Good luck!

Thank you for your advice and wishes, this is a very well explanation.

 

[LaloJ]

Hello again, could any of you give a lighting suggestion to keep this type of corals (easy/for beginners) inside a 50 gallon tank, I was thinking about DIY LED light.

 

[Red_Beard]

I've read about how easy zoanthids can be for a lot of people, and how complicated they are for other people or in some tanks they just don't seem to thrive, I hope it's not me, what do you think about favias?

Depends on the zoa. The crazy grand master kraks are going to be MUCH harder than something like a dragon eye. My first coral 5 years ago was 2 polyps of twislers. Still have polps from that same coloy, pretty red, fairly hardy decent beginner. Same with mushies. The og bounce is going to be a little harder than a streight up green discosoma, but, also weigh out growth and what you want long term. I was given a freebie green disco, in 2 years it covered all available rock space with more. But, you have to try pretty hard to kill it...

 

[Gribbles]

What about those ones make them harder?

Depends on the zoa. The crazy grand master kraks are going to be MUCH harder than something like a dragon eye. My first coral 5 years ago was 2 polyps of twislers. Still have polps from that same coloy, pretty red, fairly hardy decent beginner. Same with mushies. The og bounce is going to be a little harder than a streight up green discosoma, but, also weigh out growth and what you want long term. I was given a freebie green disco, in 2 years it covered all available rock space with more. But, you have to try pretty hard to kill it...

 

[Red_Beard]

They are much more particular about water quality, flow and lighting. Like goldilocks. They all seem to have slightly different preferences. Like i had some reverse space monsters that did awesome untill i moved them, then they melted. Same with armor of God. But so far no matter where i put twislers they have thrived. Same with utter chaos to a lesser extent. They also seem to propigate at much different rates. GMKs being much slower and harder to make happy means they cost $$$ whereas some others grow like weeds in dank pond water.

 

[Red_Beard]

Hello again, could any of you give a lighting suggestion to keep this type of corals (easy/for beginners) inside a 50 gallon tank, I was thinking about DIY LED light.

Beginner corals are pretty forgiving. If you DIY it you are going to have a lot more research to do on specific spectrum diodes to include and how to space, lenses, wattage, drivers how many per channel if you want to be able to dim them etc. Or if you change your mind most of the commercially available lights will grow any on that list. I was going to go the diy route too, then decided i choose convince and went commercial. Running radions and blades. I have mixed feelings about both.

 

[LaloJ]

Beginner corals are pretty forgiving. If you DIY it you are going to have a lot more research to do on specific spectrum diodes to include and how to space, lenses, wattage, drivers how many per channel if you want to be able to dim them etc. Or if you change your mind most of the commercially available lights will grow any on that list. I was going to go the diy route too, then decided i choose convince and went commercial. Running radions and blades. I have mixed feelings about both.

I was afraid of something like this, even if I could do it in the best possible way I would not find as much confidence as a lamp from a good brand, I'm also a beginner with corals, and it's a better option to try to look for products that have given results for many aquarists, some suggestion for a 50 gallon tank? By the way, I love the old school and although the innovation of the LEDs is magnificent, I still liked the T5 and the HQI a lot.

 

[Red_Beard]

The blades cover super even and par is really good. They definitely work great. My beef with them is that the light blue channel makes it look a little windexy. Works great and is beautiful but i am running the royal blues heavy and whites at 50% but only 20% light blue to make it look good.
Really they will all grow coral. Most of the gripes people have are esthetic. Too much disco ball, not enough shimmer, app sucks, price per par, etc. There is waaaay more customizability and options than x y or z bulb. You could watch some reviews to compare them to see what you like. You could even start with some t5s down the sides and later get led pendants to add with them should you decide you need more PAR, want some shimmer or for any other number of reasons. That is what i was going to do, but decided i didnt want to change bulbs all the time, so i went led pendant supplemented with led bars. I still have a 48 inch 8 lamp t5 ati fixture gathering dust in my garage...
Dunno what your budget is, but i would check out the reefbreeders lights too.

 

[Macbalacano]

See my tank thread I’ve purposely selected all ‘easy’ to care for corals and have a list on there.