Need advice

[Barker88]

I'm looking to start growing some coral I'm new to the hobby what king of coral is best for beginners and what additional test do I need to do for them

 

[ca2or]

Is your tank cycled?

 

[Barker88]

It's been set up for about 6 months I have two clown fish a clean up crew and some cromis fish

 

[fishfinn]

mushrooms, leathers, zoanthids, xenia, anthelia. All pretty easy and hardy corals for the most part

 

[EDO]

leathers, mushrooms are really easy. Green star polyps, xenia are easy but grow like weeds if you don't keep them under control. With those if you keep the fish happy they should be fine just keep testing what you test for now. I have a tank that I moved everything out of except for a couple of mushroom, green star and xenia and have one damsel in there and I have not been keeping up with the tank and all of the corals are doing great and still growing. I have taken the GFO, carbon and protein skimmer off the tank and they are doing great and still growing. It seams like some of these guys like less than pristine water conditions.

 

[Barker88]

What about eagle eye coral?

 

[EDO]

What about eagle eye coral?

those are zoanthids, they are pretty easy as well but you need to be more on top of your nitrates and phosphates which can cause the colors to fade or worse die, at least that is my experience.

 

[fishfinn]

What EDO said, if you have high phosphates for prolonged periods of time that may be a problem, other than that i cant see why not

 

[Ahruk]

How often do you do water changes? I personally don't test anything anymore. I just do 20% wc 1/week or 40% every other week (sometimes slightly less). I flourishing tank with mid-end zoas (laser lemons, yr peachie blues, goblins on fire,ect), beautiful acans and other lps, rock flower anemones and a growing collection of montis (sunset, starburst, ect). It's a low tech 14 gallon biocube with just a pump, heater and kessil. I think there's a good chance that you're able to keep a lot more then just the semi-weedy coral that people are recommending depending on how regular you are in your tank maintence.

 

[EDO]

How often do you do water changes? I personally don't test anything anymore. I just do 20% wc 1/week or 40% every other week (sometimes slightly less). I flourishing tank with mid-end zoas (laser lemons, yr peachie blues, goblins on fire,ect), beautiful acans and other lps, rock flower anemones and a growing collection of montis (sunset, starburst, ect). It's a low tech 14 gallon biocube with just a pump, heater and kessil. I think there's a good chance that you're able to keep a lot more then just the semi-weedy coral that people are recommending depending on how regular you are in your tank maintence.

Over time not testing your alk, cal and mag will bite you when it comes to your lps and sps. When you do a water change you are not bring up those values to where they should be over a sustained period of time unless you test and dose to keep them in the proper range for the lps and sps to have skeletal growth. Say your salt mix starts you at the levels you need as coral consume your calcium, when you do a water change you are not bring that level back to where is was before and as more time passes the level of calcium will continue to go down with a slight bump back up at water changes but still lover than your previous water change. As your lps and sps grown or you add more they will consume even more calcium. Eventually you will reach a critical point were you don't have enough calcium to support your lps and sps. Yes he could have more than softies but he asked about what was easy. If he wants to start doing more testing and dosing then of course he could start adding lps and sps.