Corals That Don't Require Dosing

[akabryanhall]

I plan on setting up a small cube for my desk at work. I may not have access to it every day due to weekends and holidays and have to think about things like controlling evap and one water change a week.
My question is this: What are some corals that would not require daily 2 part supplementation? Are softies the only type?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[cdness]

If you don't have access to it daily I would recommend looking into some of the easy DIY top off systems to help with evaporation. Either that or put on an aquarium topper to prevent the evap altogether.

Now to the dosing part, many corals can get away without dosing if you keep up on water changes with a higher parameter salt like Reef Crystals or Red Sea Coral Pro. These are just two examples of salts that are made specifically to support corals. You would be able to get away with almost anything except the really touchy SPS I would think. Zoas, shrooms, rics, birdsnest, staghorns, etc should all be OK with a good water change schedule. You may need to plan your water changes to be certain times due to weekends and holidays and test to make sure things are still going good though.

 

[akabryanhall]

Thanks for the input cdness! I was kind hoping that would be the case. I'm not really aiming to do sps, but thought about a monti or two, maybe a cap. Rest zoas and palys, a yuma and a flower nem.

 

[akabryanhall]

Oh and definitely doing a top to the aquarium.

 

[Russellaqua]

I have found that LPS work well. Many of the brain corals are so slow growing that they don't place a high demand on the system. As long as the tank is jam packed with them, you should be able to get away with dosing a couple times a week.

 

[mcarroll]

Mushrooms require no dosing. In fact, as long as you keep them wet I think you'll have a great looking tank.

Mushrooms make a great choice for an office tank IMO.

Just don't put any fish....that's asking for a problem. In most office scenarios I've been in, you can presume there will be heating and cooling outages at the wrong time, and often.

-Matt

 

[Davinci]

Best thing to do is use red sea coral pro. and with once a week water changes, you should not have to dose very much at all. what you will need to dose is if you need ph or anything like that. its actually pretty easy to dose that 2 part. do you mind telling us why you dont want to dose? mostly you dose like 2 times a week or sometimes even once a week in between water changes

 

[mcarroll]

Just a couple of clarifications... One should never dose based on pH readings - pH is a symptom as opposed to a problem. Also, if the tank is going to be stocked as a stony coral tank, dosing less than daily will not work out in the long run...only at the beginning when you start ramping up dosing for your new frags, and one should always be testing more frequently than that. Runnig a tank by dosing according to pH changes and only making adjustments ever week or few will ultimately lead to a crash.

Back to the OP's tank, I think there will be minimal stony corals, so adequate water changes with a well-fortified salt like Reef Crystals should be able to do the trick.

-Matt