Successfully keeping a mixed reef tank - your experience?

[Punchanello]

My tanks seems to have overcome a few initial hurdles and I'm keeping LPS corals pretty successfully for the most part and haven't yet ventured in to SPS. My plan was a mixed reef with mostly LPS and SPS. From what I read and am told some/most(?) reef keepers tend to do well with LPS or SPS but not necessarily both.

What's your methods for juggling the preferred flow, nutrient levels and lighting for different types of corals in the same system?

I'm new to this so have very limited experience, but from what I've read one factor could be careful feeding of LPS to compensate for the low nutrient environment SPS prefer. Is this a reasonable approach?

 

[najer]

Very good question, hopefully some of the more sps people will chime in to help.
I run a mixed reef but I am very lazy so my sps grow more slowly than most and I try to intervene as little as possible.

How do you run your tank, equipment etc, what are your water parameters please?
Do you have any pics to share?

There are many ways to run a tank, I like simple, a lot depends on what you would like to keep and achieve, good luck.

 

[HB AL]

I’ve got a pretty well mixed reef from many lps to sps, and zoas, trickiest part was flow, adjusting power heads so sps got good flow and lps received substantially less took a while but it’s working pretty successfully. Didn’t really plan on the mix but one of those things when you go to your lfs’s and see something you like and buy it. I realize some my sps probably suffer a little but I also have a lot of fish. Although not planned for, really it has worked out pretty good, as all corals in my tank have grown from small frags over the last few years. Here’s an updated pick from around a month ago or so. One pick where I have my Kessils at around 50% blue and white color and one with all white to get a pic not so blued out.

 

[andrewkw]

My tank is a softy dominated mixed reef but I do grow a few sps and even acropora does slowly grow.

For flow I run relatively high flow but there are spots in the tank for low flow corals. My main powerhead blasts across the entire back of my 5 foot long tank and not only covers where most of my sps are but also soft corals that like higher flow. My lps are mostly clustered in the front of the same side of the tank where they get less flow. I have another powerhead on the opposite side blowing steady but lessor flow to them. The return covers the rest.

White is the strong flow, grey is the lessor flow but everywhere in the tank is covered. Since this is a bare bottom I can see where all detritus and almost all ends up in the bottom right.

As for nutrient levels I run semi low nutrients. NO3 is typically 5ppm or under and phosphate is usually no higher than 0.07 but it does tend to swing a little. I typically only check phosphate about 1 time a month given that I have no algae issues and growth is relatively good. One thing I'm recently doing is swapping carbon more frequently. I used to only run carbon once a month and after 2-3 days it will loose its effectiveness. high capacity gfo is replaced every 4-6 weeks which is usually when I check the PO4. I also carbon dose a small amount daily regardless of nutrient level to feed bacteria and keep things more or less in check but not at an exact 0/0 number or even an exact number. I dialed in how much diy nopox works for me and leave it at that. If by chance NO3 dips I simply feed more rather then adjust the dosage. Since my feeding routine is pretty routine I typically do not encounter this issue. I also add acropower twice a week.

I run alk closer to natural sea water at 7.7dkh. My tank is also bare bottom and I remove some but not all detritus on a weekly basis. I am not trying to keep the tank sterile I am trying to prevent years of buildup creating a problem. When you're talking about most LPS they don't need elevated nutrient levels imo. My LPS are target fed. I even have some NPS corals in my tank they along with the lps and anemones and even the softies and sps are target fed weekly. They are not feeding off NO3/PO4 they are feeding off food particles either from target feeding, broadcast feeding or fish poop. Small foods like reef roids for the small mouths, big foods like mysis for the dendros ect. This is not what I'd describe as "careful" feeding. It is however target feeding pretty much everything. If I run out of food and miss something that's not a big deal but for about 1hour I turn off all flow. This is right before my water change so while removing detritus I remove most of the uneaten food but my fish of course also eat it.

As for lighting I am running 3 Kessils across my 5 foot tank, one is an old a350 and the other 2 are a360s. The 350 is on the side with the lps. I do have a setosa and birdsnest above but these are lower light sps. For additional light I run a black box between 2 of the kessils over the acros. This is not really noticeable when looking at the tank (it's on in the above picture). One of these days I will probably add a 4th Kessil, I just don't feel I urgently need it. Of course I could just as easily buy 2 more black boxes and have money to spare and go 3 blackboxes 3 kessils. I said goodbye to T5's a long time ago and while I do consider adding 2 from time to time I always end up saying forget it.

A couple of pics of some of the sps since looking at the fts shot you may just think this is a softy only reef. The green acro started as one branch maybe 15 months ago. The other ones are newer. 2 years ago I lost all of my sps and most of my lps in a long distance move that included keeping my corals in holding tanks for 6 weeks. Softies were mostly unharmed and thrived. I've always had mixed reefs in the 13 or so years I have been reefing. While I definitely do love and appreciate acropora, I've never been able to let go of things like leather corals and meaty lps (or encrusting for that matter). Eventually at some point in my life I do hope to do an sps dominate system, but if someone who's more of an expert wants to chime in as far as any suggestions on increasing growth in hard corals in such a softy dominate system I'd love to hear their thoughts. I think more carbon will help, my water is pretty clear so I don't think I'll shock the system although I still plan on ramping it up slowly.

For the OP with LPS/SPS the carbon is less of a concern for you. It's the toxins from the soft corals that are slowing down my hard coral growth. If you're not going to have a lot of leathers and other soft coral placement as far as lighting and flow are your main concerns. Plan your aquascape and powerhead placement accordingly and you should be fine.

 

[mcarroll]

My tanks seems to have overcome a few initial hurdles and I'm keeping LPS corals pretty successfully for the most part and haven't yet ventured in to SPS. My plan was a mixed reef with mostly LPS and SPS. From what I read and am told some/most(?) reef keepers tend to do well with LPS or SPS but not necessarily both.

What's your methods for juggling the preferred flow, nutrient levels and lighting for different types of corals in the same system?

I'm new to this so have very limited experience, but from what I've read one factor could be careful feeding of LPS to compensate for the low nutrient environment SPS prefer. Is this a reasonable approach?

I would let go of the low nutrient ideas and simply put your efforts into a moderate, stable system in as many respects as possible.

LPS and SPS can be very compatible as they are both stony corals at heart. A little research (ie. Corals of the World website's fact sheets) will tell you if the corals you have in mind are from drastically different types of ecosystems. But MOST corals you'll find for sale are likely to be compatible. Incompatible ones are likely to be more exotic items so won't be hard to avoid.

There are other factors that contribute to coral compatibility too, however, like they might try to eat each other...or (one you noted) flow preference. In general, corals with very thick tissue CANNOT take a lot of flow whereas corals with very thin tissue (usually with a branching structure) require/tolerate much stronger flow.

Watching Tunze's flow vs turbulence video should be mandatory IMO, so give it watch. It should answer some questions and give you some info to use for flow strategy.


Also, LPS's requirement (indeed corals in general...even anemones too) to be directly fed is overhyped, unless you're keeping them in a sterile tank somehow. If you're keeping fish, just feed your fish well and assume the corals are fine. Corals and anemones feed on large prey only infrequently at most and it's not clear how required it really is as they have numerous other feeding methods including the utilization of dissolved nutrients from the water.

Leather corals and soft polyp coral (zoanthids, paly's, et al) tanks will probably benefit from the use of activated carbon... Leathers apparently generate terpenoid compounds that ****** growth of stony corals (look it up to be sure) and polyps can generate some of the deadliest toxins known. Both can be removed from the water with regular use of carbon. Usually 1 cup per 100 gallons, changed out monthly. But follow any product instructions that come with what you end up using.

 

[Paston1]

That concept of ULN but they keep lots of fish which generates ammonia. Ammonia is used as nitrogen source for coral but it’s never mentioned.

Euphyllia collector but still keep sps in low light and massive flow with overly dirty water lol.