Am I ready for corals?

[Kilman805]

I feel a little silly for even asking because I know lots of people throw in corals as soon as they think the tank might be cycled. I’ve been intentionally taking things slow, hoping to avoid major issues that would discourage me. But my tank has been up and running for about nine months now and was started with Tampa Bay Saltwater live ocean rock. So aside from some minor mishaps, it’s been going well. But it’s still just rock, fish and assorted cleanup crew.

You can check the build thread for more info, but the basics are here:
Fluval Flex 32.5 gallon AIO
AquaForest salt, currently at 1.025 sg
Skimmer
Santa Monica HOG1x algae turf scrubber
Nitrate 25 ppm
Phosphate 0.5 ppm
No sump / refugium
2 Ocellaris Clownfish, 1 azure damsel, 1 Red Stop Light Cardinalfish, 1 Reef Blue Chromis, and 1 Wheeler Goby - pistol shrimp pair.
Feed 1/3 cube of San Francisco Bay marine cuisine or emerald entree twice daily

Nutrients have always run high because I have little export besides 10 gallon water changes every 3-4 weeks. I’ve had the ATS for a couple months now and it seems to be helping reduce nitrate and at least hold phosphate steady. I have Hanna checkers for these now. I’ve recently dosed some lanthanum chloride to pull the phosphate lower so the ATS will grow green algae instead of the nasty purple muck that dominates now. I plan to work down to 0.1-0.2 ppm with the lanthanum chloride and see if the ATS will hold it from there.

Other possible “issues” are one or two gorilla crab hitchhikers and the aiptasia-like anemones from the TBS rock. I’m not sure how bad those may be for corals.

My tentative plan is to start with several LPS frags. I’ll list some possibilities in a follow-up later. I’m completely new to corals.

Despite the high nutrients, I have not had major algae issues, though you’ll see some at the bottom of the glass and growing in the powerheads. But part of that is probably due to keeping the lights pretty low. I’m running dual Fluval Marine 3.0 lights, the stock one plus one added. But I’m only running at about 25% for about 14 hours a day. Should I get the nutrients lower and see if I can still keep algae under control with the lights at 75-100% before adding coral?

I guess maybe that’s my main initial question… should I prove to myself that I can turn up the lights without algae going crazy before adding coral?

 

[smitten with ocean life]

i would give you the green light!! have fun!

 

[Hairyteeth]

Go for it!

 

[exnisstech]

Using real live rock at start up I would crank up the lights and start enjoying the tank.
Myself I don't associate high nutrients (N and P) with nuisance algae. I've had one tank that I battled GHA for over a year and N and P always ran at or close to 0 when I would dose them up. I wish I knew what the actual cause of nuisance algae is but IME it isn't from high levels of N and P (which IMO yours are not). The tank below was started with all dry rock in the display and a bunch of live rock in the sump. Tank has been running about 15 months now and I have never had nuisance algae. I do have a lot of herbivores tho which I highly recommend.
NO3 runs over 20 and PO4 0.4 to over 0.9 where my tester maxes out.
I run a surf 4x ATS and the last few months it hasn't been growing much while it was doing great for the first year. The tank looks good so I just keep rolling.

 

[petcellar]

I like how you are doing it.

 

[StartingATank]

Seems good but phosphates and nitrates are a little high, really decrease phosphates to probably .1 and nitrates to 15-20

 

[Fish Fan]

I feel a little silly for even asking because I know lots of people throw in corals as soon as they think the tank might be cycled. I’ve been intentionally taking things slow, hoping to avoid major issues that would discourage me. But my tank has been up and running for about nine months now and was started with Tampa Bay Saltwater live ocean rock. So aside from some minor mishaps, it’s been going well. But it’s still just rock, fish and assorted cleanup crew.

You can check the build thread for more info, but the basics are here:
Fluval Flex 32.5 gallon AIO
AquaForest salt, currently at 1.025 sg
Skimmer
Santa Monica HOG1x algae turf scrubber
Nitrate 25 ppm
Phosphate 0.5 ppm
No sump / refugium
2 Ocellaris Clownfish, 1 azure damsel, 1 Red Stop Light Cardinalfish, 1 Reef Blue Chromis, and 1 Wheeler Goby - pistol shrimp pair.
Feed 1/3 cube of San Francisco Bay marine cuisine or emerald entree twice daily

Nutrients have always run high because I have little export besides 10 gallon water changes every 3-4 weeks. I’ve had the ATS for a couple months now and it seems to be helping reduce nitrate and at least hold phosphate steady. I have Hanna checkers for these now. I’ve recently dosed some lanthanum chloride to pull the phosphate lower so the ATS will grow green algae instead of the nasty purple muck that dominates now. I plan to work down to 0.1-0.2 ppm with the lanthanum chloride and see if the ATS will hold it from there.

Other possible “issues” are one or two gorilla crab hitchhikers and the aiptasia-like anemones from the TBS rock. I’m not sure how bad those may be for corals.

My tentative plan is to start with several LPS frags. I’ll list some possibilities in a follow-up later. I’m completely new to corals.

Despite the high nutrients, I have not had major algae issues, though you’ll see some at the bottom of the glass and growing in the powerheads. But part of that is probably due to keeping the lights pretty low. I’m running dual Fluval Marine 3.0 lights, the stock one plus one added. But I’m only running at about 25% for about 14 hours a day. Should I get the nutrients lower and see if I can still keep algae under control with the lights at 75-100% before adding coral?

I guess maybe that’s my main initial question… should I prove to myself that I can turn up the lights without algae going crazy before adding coral?

Your tank looks great!

 

[Kilman805]

First, thanks for all of the positive feedback!

Second, may I please get some feedback on my proposal below for coral additions?

The lettered positions correspond to these coral varieties:
A- Frogspawn (Euphyllia divisa or Fimbriaphyllia divisa)
B- Duncan (Duncanopsammia axifuga)
C- Candy Cane (aka Trumpet or Bullseye) (Caulastrea furcata)
G- Brain coral (Favites)
E- Sandpaper coral (Psammocora)
F- Pagoda Cup coral (Turbinaria)
D- Acan Lord (Micromussa lordhowensis)
H- Leaf plate coral (Montipora capricornis)

The photo with the superimposed thumbnail photos should match those labels.

I've tried to consider lighting and flow requirements, My lighting consists of two Fluval Marine 3.0 strips (the stock light plus an extra. It's difficult to find reliable PAR estimates for this light and particularly for the dual configuration of this light. I'm estimating I can reach 150-200 PAR at the higher locations (E,F,H) and it will drop to 60-90 PAR at the lower locations (B,C,D).

I have three SICCE Voyager Nano 1000 Wave Maker Flow Pumps (270 GPH), one positioned midway up on the left wall, one positioned midway up on the right wall, and a third positioned near the top of the left wall providing turbulence across the top of the water surface. I'm a little concerned about enough flow reaching the two SPS corals at E and H. I could upgrade these, if needed.

I'm looking to source the coral from TerraReef. If anyone has feedback on them, please share here or in DM.

 

[Kilman805]

I’ve been ramping up my lights. I figured I would work up over the next couple weeks. I’m up to 60% and haven't noticed extra algae. I’m running the ATS full blast and dosing some lanthanum chloride, so my nitrate and phosphate are steadily coming down.

I’m tempted to pick up a couple of the Jebao DMP-10 Ecotech clones. My Sicce powerheads are single speed and don’t generate much flow except directly in front of them.

Would still love to hear feedback on my proposed coral stocking. Is jumping straight to LPS and a couple hardier SPS a reasonable plan?

 

[modom1207]

I have your same tank with the same lights, though I didn’t buy a second stock light. I have LPS, softies, and two BTA anemones on top of 8 fish and 3/4 the amount of your live rock. I don’t have a scrubber or skimmer.

I’ve learned that the fluval 3.0 marine lights really suck. I run my single stock light on 100% for blues, cyan, and purple. My red has been on 20%, and I just increased my white yesterday to see if I can get some better coloring out of my anemones. I’ve done this for about a year and a half at 12 hours per day. It’s still not enough PAR for my anemones unfortunately, but they’re doing good otherwise. The rest of my stuff is very vibrant. My torch, hammer, and Duncan are all happy and growing new heads. My softies are growing like weeds.

Have you rinsed your two large filter paddings in tank water yet? I feed a single frozen cube of mixed reef fish food each day (so same amount as you), and I could never bring my nitrates down with the same water change system you are doing (10 gal once a month) until I began rinsing my filter in dirty tank water once every three to six months. Now my nitrates never get above 10. I also started using phosbond about six months ago, and my phosphates are now at .01-.02 consistently, so basically 0. I haven’t had an issue with algae since getting my phosphates all the way down. I personally don’t think the algae in our tanks with the stock lights can be attributed much to the lighting alone because it really just sucks. That being said, my corals also bring down my nutrients by consuming them, so I’d try out the corals first and then check your tank params. They may take care of some of those nutrient issues for you.

If you’re going to do LPS, I’d turn your lights up pretty much as far as they can go on the blue spectrum while keeping any LPS above the sandbed but below 4 inches deep (from the light on the lid). According to fluval, the par levels for our tank with the single stock light is 376 at 3”, 222 at 6”, 90 at 12”, and 47 at 18”. So from where your sandbed is, your par level with two lights is likely around 90 or above.

Also, idk what your CUC is looking at but my algae issues also improved when I added about 25 hermits (probably 10 have died since then from them mutilating each other) and 2 turbo snails to the CUC I already had in the tank. You definitely have the rock work to have a robust clean up crew.