Suggestions for a new coral owner

JoeSchmo45 · Dec 2, 2020

Hello R2R!

I have a Reefer 170 that is 4 months old (cycled for 3 months). I have two clownfish, a cleaner shrimp, and an orange spotted goby living in it right now. I just made my first coral purchases, which is very exciting and also super stressful! I don't have a LFS so my only option right now is mail order. I received my two coral frags along with a freebie yesterday. I acclimated them, did a dip in ReVive and then placed them in the tank. To say I don't have a clue about placing corals would be a huge understatement. I've done a lot of research and reading but I still am uncertain. Here is a picture of my tank with the new corals circled. Far right is a frag of zoas. In the middle is a pink and blue ricordea mushroom (Florida). The freebie is some kind of bright green mushroom but I'm not sure exactly what type. I originally had the green one in the sand out in the open and he was not at all happy. I moved him close to the rocks in a bit of shade and he's stretched out quite a bit. The Zoas are staying pretty closed. A couple of them opened up, but not many. I honestly don't know what a ricordea should look like. It seems good to me right now, but I'm not sure. I'm just wondering if anyone sees any glaring placement issues. It's so hard for me to judge what is considered a high flow or medium flow area. Sorry for the image quality. I need a filter! If anyone has suggestions or advice, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!
Joe

PicassoClown04 · Dec 2, 2020

Hi! If you can hold the freebie up to the glass I’d love to give it a shot at IDing it for you! I usually keep Shrooms and zoas on the bottom of my tank. Zoas with just enough flow to make the skirt flutter. Best of luck and that’s a gorgeous ricordia! We’re the zoas ID’d by the seller?

JoeSchmo45 · Dec 2, 2020

footgal said:
Hi! If you can hold the freebie up to the glass I’d love to give it a shot at IDing it for you! I usually keep Shrooms and zoas on the bottom of my tank. Zoas with just enough flow to make the skirt flutter. Best of luck and that’s a gorgeous ricordia! We’re the zoas ID’d by the seller?

I ordered the corals from Seattle Corals so the Zoa was simply called - Seahawks Colored Zoa (naturally!). The ricordea color is incredible. I sure hope it does well because it's beautiful. I'll try tomorrow to get a shot of the mushroom. I appreciate it! I know the zoas could take some time to open up. At what point should I be worried? They spent a good long time in a box, so I don't blame them for being mad at me! Thanks again and your tank is INCREDIBLE!

Thanks!
Joe

JPM San Diego · Dec 2, 2020

Hello and welcome to the hobby. I am a relative newcomer starting 3 years ago but not really getting it right until one year ago. Don't worry about getting strong flow for the types of coral you have now. Softies don't need high flow. Initially less light is better than too much light. Better to move a coral up into brighter light over time than to start with too much light and burn/bleach them. Watch YouTube videos! Tidal Gardens has a whole series of Coral Spotlight videos. Here is an example (Ricordia) for you

Also, Bulk Reef Supply has an extensive library of videos. I must have watched a hundred by now.
Anyway, here is an example regarding lighting.

There are plenty of other good reefing how to YouTubers as well.
Welcome aboard.

JPM San Diego · Dec 2, 2020

Also, regarding photography, using an orange filter is what you need. I found a cheap way to accomplish this. At Reefapalooza (LA 2019) a vender was giving away orange sunglasses to use for looking at corals and seeing what they look like without actinic lighting. I take pictures now using my iPhone just shooting through the glasses. Here is the same coral, same lighting with and without the glasses:

PicassoClown04 · Dec 3, 2020

I use the icecap phone lens btw. Pics from an iPhone 8 with the macro and orange lenses. $30 on Amazon I believe.

I usually give zoas 24 hours before freaking out a little. Make sure there’s no algae on the polyps or plug (if the plug has a green tint that’s fine, I’m talking about the long hair or bubble algae).

thanks for the compliment! The tank will be a year old in two months

JoeSchmo45 · Dec 4, 2020

JPM San Diego said:
Also, regarding photography, using an orange filter is what you need. I found a cheap way to accomplish this. At Reefapalooza (LA 2019) a vender was giving away orange sunglasses to use for looking at corals and seeing what they look like without actinic lighting. I take pictures now using my iPhone just shooting through the glasses. Here is the same coral, same lighting with and without the glasses:

footgal said:
I use the icecap phone lens btw. Pics from an iPhone 8 with the macro and orange lenses. $30 on Amazon I believe.

I usually give zoas 24 hours before freaking out a little. Make sure there’s no algae on the polyps or plug (if the plug has a green tint that’s fine, I’m talking about the long hair or bubble algae).

thanks for the compliment! The tank will be a year old in two months

Thank you all for the tips! JPM, I've been addicted to those youtube videos for a while now. Thanks for showing me the mushroom video. I hadn't seen that channel before. Very informative! Footgal, thank you for the tip on the phone lense! I definitely need to get one of those. The zoas have all opened up today, for the most part. This may be a really dumb question but these zoas are TINY. There are a lot of polyps on this plug. Does that mean these are "full grown"? Do they get bigger before they grow new polyps or are these as big as they get? I really love their color either way, but I'm curious if the disc grows or just the skirts.

Footgal, I'm attaching a closeup of the unknown green mushroom. It was opened up around the plug so I didn't want to move it. It's a bright green with the bumps being the brightest part of the green color. Any idea what kind it is?