Top Tips for Soft Coral

[nomar5050]

Hey Everyone

Recently set up my first salt water tank! Things seem to be going well so far. Just got my first couple fish in there about a week or so and they all seem to be acclimating well (except for a small Ich breakout on the Blue Hippo Tang which I hear is fairly common, but it's almost gone).

I was going to go to the store today and get my first pieces of coral for the tank. Considering its my first time keeping coral, just wanted to see if you wanted to share some helpful tips with keeping and growing coral.

Right now I have a 30 gal tank with 2 clownfish, blue tang, 2 cleaner shrimp, and a sand sifting star fish. About 17 lbs of live rock and run my white LED light for 6.5 hours a day and leave the blue light on for an hour longer.

So there it is, what are the top 3/5 tips you have for me to successfully grow coral?

Thanks!

 

[Tahoe61]

1. Water changes.
2. Consistent chemistry such as SG, get an ATO.
3. Do not over polish the water, some nitrates and phosphates are ok within reason.
4. Choose carefully as many soft coral/octocorals will grow and some can become invasive. Green Star Polyps, Anthelia, Xenia, Palys and some mushroom types can take over a tank quickly.
5. Water changes will replenish the trace elements, do not dose trace elements unless you know there is a deficiency, or the tank is established with a lot of coral growth.

 

[helen ann]

You may want to check this thread out to make sure about the Ich, from my understanding if you have ich in your DT, you need to pull the fish and put in a QT and go fallow in the DT for 76 days but will call the real pros to help.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/ich-cryptocaryon-irritans.191226/

@Humblefish & @melypr1985

 

[melypr1985]

You may want to check this thread out to make sure about the Ich, from my understanding if you have ich in your DT, you need to pull the fish and put in a QT and go fallow in the DT for 76 days but will call the real pros to help.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/ich-cryptocaryon-irritans.191226/

@Humblefish & @melypr1985

Your correct but since he's not asking what to do about the ick in the tank all we can do is caution. I'll just say that since ick is present in the tank now, it will be until you go fallow like stated above and treat the fish. It may not be a major problem for you until you get a delicate fish that is unable to live in an "ick management" situation.... or a stressor even happens and they all break out in ick. This could be disastrous, so figured I'd put it out there.

 

[brandon4432]

My only advice is to consistently do water changes once a week with a high quality salt. Don't dose additional supplements until you establish that you absolutely have a deficiency. This coupled extremely stable parameters will make certain soft corals explode. When I first started I put 5 soft corals in my nano tank, followed this recipe and was forced to start fragging due to a high rate of growth. Just be patient, consistent, and don't make too many sudden changes to the tank bc it will all slow growth down. Good luck!