Help with Corals: More light or more flow?

[mike550]

Hello! Newbie reefer with a tank that’s about a year old. I started adding corals a few months ago and so far so good. My goal is a mixed reef tank with a good variety of corals — easily avoiding acros for a while. The corals are growing but clearly the ones closer to the light are thriving compared to others.

My tank is a 120G and I’ve got one MP40 flowing across the tank in reef mode. I measured my PAR and it’s around 80 in the sand bed with the top of rocks varying but average around 250PAR. So my question is will my coral growth benefit more from more flow — thinking another MP40 on the back wall — or more light — currently using two AI Prime HD 16s and could add two more.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Chef Mateo]

I personally would say both the lights and flow.

For the lights you could have a hydra in the center and the AI Primes on the left and right but 2 more AI Primes will work as well

 

[DSEKULA]

Depends on the specific corals what ones look not as great? Any pics?

 

[mike550]

I personally would say both the lights and flow.

For the lights you could have a hydra in the center and the AI Primes on the left and right but 2 more AI Primes will work as well

Thanks @Chef Mateo. I guess I should have mentioned as if you could only choose one. My 120 has a brace across the top in the center so that’s why I was thinking of adding two more Primes.

 

[Chef Mateo]

Thanks @Chef Mateo. I guess I should have mentioned as if you could only choose one. My 120 has a brace across the top in the center so that’s why I was thinking of adding two more Primes.

Yep adding two primes would be perfect for your tank, I would pick that over flow cause a MP40 is pretty powerful!

 

[mike550]

Depends on the specific corals what ones look not as great? Any pics?

I can try to post pics tomorrow. To your point I may have placed corals in “bad” spots so they aren’t thriving. Chalk that up to being a newbie!

 

[DSEKULA]

I can try to post pics tomorrow. To your point I may have placed corals in “bad” spots so they aren’t thriving. Chalk that up to being a newbie!

It could be many things, light and flow are two but it could also be that some coral just take longer to look happy or all of one type looks good while everything with other specific needs looks only ok. It could also be a combination of things. Coral also fight sometimes if you have something looking really happy and open and everything around it looks poor depending on species it could be attacking the others.
Anyway, most pictures are really helpful showing a situation because sometimes words just fall short. Don't feel bad we've all been in the position of trying to figure out what's going on with a specific reef inhabitant. One corals perfect spot will be anothers bad spot so before you go spending more cash maybe there's some easy things you can do with what you have and make everything happy
*As a side note keep on mind that if you raise the light and/or flow the things that are happy now might be unhappy with too much.