Haw long should you wait before adding SPS corals to your tank

[Dkmoo]

Hmm;
Easy ones can do ok ina young tank.

Yeah mate. Thats why I started with "generally". Easy ones are just that - easy, they will more likely do fine in a variety of conditions. OP asked for general adding SPS. In "general" SPS is not easy.

 

[Garf]

Yeah mate. Thats why I started with "generally". Easy ones are just that - easy, they will more likely do fine in a variety of conditions. OP asked for general adding SPS. In "general" SPS is not easy.

Wouldn’t be fun if it was easy, would it?

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

I would caution against adding it before the 1 year mark for the following reasons.

1) although there are a few hardy SPS, I'm assuming when most people talk about SPS, their goal is to eventually get acropora. So, generally speaking, SPS needs a lot of stability to flourish. Maintaining the perfect parameters is only one side of the coin. The other half are all the environmental conditions we cannot measure and control - bacteria, microfauna, DOC, pods, and how they weaving a intricate web of cause and effects. This half we cannot hope to control. Dosing bacteria and pods is going to be hit or miss bc we cannot measure how they interact with one another si its all guesswork. This intricate web is just as important as maintaining water chemistry (no3. Po4. Alk, ca, mg, ph, etc..) and this web is only achieved in the tanks natural maturation process, and unfortunately, the only thing that get you there is time.

2) With out a mature tank, its not impossible to keep SPS, but it will be a lot harder. Inevitably, due to what I mentioned above, your tank will go thru cycles, SPS will be the first to go from these fluctuation.

3) in these forums you have take all the "I added everything right away and everything is fine!" response with a grain of salt bc there is going to be a lot of confirmation bias bias there - people are a lot more likely to respond to you when they have a good outcome than if they had a bad one. People are a lot less likely to respond to you if they added SPS right away and everything died. In fact a good % of those people will also give up the hobby altogether and not even show up in these forums. Even the ones that had positive results fall under these two subcategories 1) those who admit still having losses, STN, issues and 2) those whos tanks are still too young to really claim that they are successful. What you really want to see are those cases where people added SPS right away and 1 year later they still had good results. Just by reading the different "help my SPS is dying" posts in these forums, I can tell you for a fact that the type of "success stories" that you are looking for is far and few in between. These is why the #1 advice thats been repeated over and over again, and the 1 point in the noobie guide, is "take things slow"

4) if you are looking for a challenge by all means do it. Just be prepared when you run into issues and suffer coral loss. Just based on the help posts in these forums, I would estimate 4 out of 10 who do what you do end up with big issues causing resets, 4 out of 10 will have issues that can be overcome but will have between 30% - 60% SPS frag survival rate. And 2 out of 10 will have q successful run of 75%+ frag survival rate.

I agree with you on the challenges. Nothing you are saying I slightly disagree with. More mature tanks are more suited and easier for aquaculture. Just making the point that you can be successful without waiting for some predetermined time period .

 

[jhuntstl]

I started with hardier, affordable SPS right off the bat. I'm 4 months in. The key without a doubt is stability. All of my losses or setbacks can most likely be attributed to nutrient or alkalinity swings. I'm dosing All-for-Reef and testing ALK daily atm. I don't expect I'll be able to relax on testing for a while. It's certainly more of a challenge. My tank is growing and looks fantastic imo, but I'm paranoid as all hell of losing it all. I don't regret the path I've taken.

 

[Acameron2]

I’d say when the nitrogen cycle is out of the way it’s a go for really anything slowly. Typically id say have the fun of adding the fish first and then coral. That way you can start to get an idea of nutrients.

 

[Reefer525XL]

Tank is just a few days from 3 months since it got wet. Started with dry rock and “live” sand. Had acros first week.

I think it just comes down to experience.

 

[elorablue]

Tank is just a few days from 3 months since it got wet. Started with dry rock and “live” sand. Had acros first week.

I think it just comes down to experience.

And I thought I was an Acro addict ! Lol some great pieces there.

 

[happyhourhero]

I rolled the dice early on this tank and threw in some montis at day 10 and acros at 2.5 months.

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

I would caution against adding it before the 1 year mark for the following reasons.

1) although there are a few hardy SPS, I'm assuming when most people talk about SPS, their goal is to eventually get acropora. So, generally speaking, SPS needs a lot of stability to flourish. Maintaining the perfect parameters is only one side of the coin. The other half are all the environmental conditions we cannot measure and control - bacteria, microfauna, DOC, pods, and how they weaving a intricate web of cause and effects. This half we cannot hope to control. Dosing bacteria and pods is going to be hit or miss bc we cannot measure how they interact with one another si its all guesswork. This intricate web is just as important as maintaining water chemistry (no3. Po4. Alk, ca, mg, ph, etc..) and this web is only achieved in the tanks natural maturation process, and unfortunately, the only thing that get you there is time.

2) With out a mature tank, its not impossible to keep SPS, but it will be a lot harder. Inevitably, due to what I mentioned above, your tank will go thru cycles, SPS will be the first to go from these fluctuation.

3) in these forums you have take all the "I added everything right away and everything is fine!" response with a grain of salt bc there is going to be a lot of confirmation bias bias there - people are a lot more likely to respond to you when they have a good outcome than if they had a bad one. People are a lot less likely to respond to you if they added SPS right away and everything died. In fact a good % of those people will also give up the hobby altogether and not even show up in these forums. Even the ones that had positive results fall under these two subcategories 1) those who admit still having losses, STN, issues and 2) those whos tanks are still too young to really claim that they are successful. What you really want to see are those cases where people added SPS right away and 1 year later they still had good results. Just by reading the different "help my SPS is dying" posts in these forums, I can tell you for a fact that the type of "success stories" that you are looking for is far and few in between. These is why the #1 advice thats been repeated over and over again, and the 1 point in the noobie guide, is "take things slow"

4) if you are looking for a challenge by all means do it. Just be prepared when you run into issues and suffer coral loss. Just based on the help posts in these forums, I would estimate 4 out of 10 who do what you do end up with big issues causing resets, 4 out of 10 will have issues that can be overcome but will have between 30% - 60% SPS frag survival rate. And 2 out of 10 will have q successful run of 75%+ frag survival rate.

I concur sir, well put and better writing and language skills than me but if I knew how to thats what I'd say!

 

[Wasabiroot]

Depends on what rock you use. I use cultured real ocean live rock from KP Aquatics and had SPS in my tank in the first week and Acropora at second month.
For dead terrestrial rock, probably need to wait 6-9 months.
I want to point out that when this hobby was first getting started in the 80s, they only used dead coral skeletons and dry rocks and could never successfully keep SPS corals.

The discovery of the benefits to using real ocean live rock, led to the eventual success with SPS coral. It was the key. The hobby has forgotten that and been lied to about it by BRS as well. No one would buy Live rock from BRS because shipping cost a fortune. They always bought it at the LFS and it was a profitable staple of LFS sales.

Once BRS realized this, they made a propaganda youtube video about how evil live rock is and how horrible little hitchhikers are and scared new hobbyists away from it to push their garbage dry rock. Shame because people trusted them as an authority.

All of it hurt the hobby because starting a new tank with dead dry rock is much harder and takes much longer than with real ocean live rock.

They've been saying live rock is best...repeatedly. Not everyone is in the same financial boat to start a tank with 100% live rock. I watch plenty of their videos and I wasn't scared off of live rock, just chose dry due to cost.

 

[KBlue]

No need to wait. Maintain a stable alk, avoid over feeding and most importantly don’t let your phosphates bottom out. Especially don’t feed aminos and coral foods or that’ll result in ugly algae’s.

So what do you feed them? Are you saying don’t feed at all.

No need to wait. Maintain a stable alk, avoid over feeding and most importantly don’t let your phosphates bottom out. Especially don’t feed aminos and coral foods or that’ll result in ugly algae’s.