When to start adding corals?

[Ferrell]

Be careful with hermits. Sometimes they can be more trouble than they're worth as they'll take any chance to kill a snail. I accidentally ordered some with my 220 CUC and I'll eventually banish them to the fuge.

Gotcha. Thanks for the tip

 

[bryan3536]

Exact same situation as OP (new tank, fish and CUC in place, ready to start with corals). Following thread, great advice.

 

[Fourstars]

Looks like you started with dead rock so maybe not to fast. I would add trochus niloticus ORA sells captive breed which I’ve had really good luck with. At least one per 5 gallons, and maybe a dozen red hermits, might need to supplement their diets for a few weeks, don’t want to have one of those nutrient packs rotting in your new tank. Mushrooms zoeathids LPS sounds like a good start.

 

[Ferrell]

Several bits of advice from my experience:
1. If you want euphyllia nix the hermits when you add the euphyllia. I banished them to the sump after attacking frogspawn. Froggy still hanging on but...
2. Trocus, nassarius, fighting conch, couple turbos good. Cerites good.
3. Don’t let NO3PO4 bottom out. Had a terrible cyano outbreak when the NO3PO4 stayed at 0 for a month. Who knew
4. Keep up with Alk if you’re doing kalk in ato. Evaporation changes with seasons I’m adjusting Alk up daily with full concentration kalk in ATK. Just not enough evaporation right now.
Good luck. It’s just now getting good with some growth evident.

 

[ramona]

Great thread for beginners, a lot to learn; following along;

 

[Plummer]

Absolutely can't go wrong with trochus snails, they can upright themselves if flipped over and they do a spin move if hermits try to kill them and they go flying off

 

[Royy13]

This is good stuff. I started my tank a few weeks ago as well. Used dead rock and Dr. Tim’s. I added a clown and royal gramma immediately. No ammonia or nitrite recorded in the first two weeks. My brother-in-law took his tank down and gave me his clown. Still no measuable ammonia or nitrite. I just added a few blue-green chromis today. I’m done for a while with fish. We will see how the parameters measure out over the next few days. I’m becoming a believer in Dr. Tim’s. I have a bunch of corals in a quarantine tank from my old setup that I took down. I’m probably going to add them to the new tank in the next week if it all looks good.

Roy

 

[pgooden]

I have been on the same path. Never had luck with corals. Making a concerted effort now and have slowly been adding corals on a frag rack and doing ok. I bought several at the last WWC live sale:

Favia
2 - acans
2 - SPS
GSP

but I had decided to dose NoPoX to bring nitrates and phosphates down as I had been fish only for a while. So my No3Po4 bottomed out. I quit dosing the NoPoX like 3 weeks ago but I cannot get my nitrates up at all. Any suggestions? I tested yesterday and Nitrate was barely .2 and phosphate was 0 using Hannah checker.

The sticks all have good polyp extension but the favia and acans while not doing bad aren’t as happy; especially the favia. Feel like they would benefit by having some nutrients.

I am afraid I am battling either cyano or dino but not bad which would explain my No3Po4 stuck at 0. I have some dark scarlet red algae on my frag rack and MP40.

@Ferrell What did you do to beat it?

I am feeding a cube of mysis and Red Sea A+B (1ml each) or flake once per day. The favia and acan aren’t getting any mysis because of my wrasse and cleaner shrimp lol...they are pigs!

Any suggestions? I would love nitrates to be 2-5 and phosphates .04-.07

Currently at:
Cal 425
Alk 8.7
Mag 1350
PH 7.9 - 8.1

Tank reefer 250 65 gal
Lights 2 XR15 pro running A+B program.

Shane

 

[swensos]

You can add pods right away. I added pods during my cycle and I’ve never had a shortage since. If you don’t have algae yet, buy a small clean up crew.

I bought three trochus snails after my tank was a couple months old. They loved the diatoms. One died, but when my tank went through the uglies around the 4-6 month mark, the remaining two had babies after babies. I have updwards of 40 now.

 

[Gareth elliott]

I personally like the $5-$10 coral section at the lfs. Tests your ability on a particular corals. If you succeed great! If not learning experience that cost you very little.

Main advice would be to take any stocking suggestions from your lfs with a good dose of skepticism. Sometimes they are right, other just entirely wrong, other times they are going off some incorrect anecdotal information. If they say this eats that, or this goes with that. Read as much as you can before you take their word for it.

 

[imustbenuts]

Nitrates at 2 - 5 with detectable phosphates before adding corals. You might also want to replace one of the coral + with blue +(2b+,1a,1c+). Don’t worry about nutrients until you can’t keep nitrates under 10. KISS method

 

[Ferrell]

First of all I'm not a big proponent of chemicals,only as a last resort .
So I tried just vacuuming the sand bed. Cyano does not vacuum with the standard tube. I guess it Just got tumbled into the sand bed .Just use the hose part and suck cyano off the sand,it comes off in hunks, and filter through socks .You will get a lot of sand too but I didn't care. When I got as much as I could get out, i changed the socks and turned out the lights for 3 days .After the lights out was done I only ran lights for four hours and gradually increased over the next few weeks .Did a 15% water change about 3 days later and haven't seen since. Nitrates began rising and Been doing 10% changes every one to two weeks since .Keeping NO3 around 6-7. Still no PO4 .Good luck .I know lights out doesn't work all the time but did for me .Oh almost forgot increased MP10 speed on reef from 65% to 90% .

 

[klp]

I think my first coral were some Paly's. They like somewhat dirty water and can handle the new tank blues. If I remember correctly, I added a Kenya tree early on too. Don't lol! Whatever you add, make sure it's cheap. Hopefully a LFS has $5 frags. Start with a couple of those.

For CUC, as soon as you start seeing diatoms or film algae add a small crew. I haven't caught the size of your tank but go smaller than what online suggestions usually are. I see you plan on adding CUC piecemeal. More expensive but less likely to have die off. Try to include a diverse mix of CUC. I have some turbo, nassarius, nerite, cerith, dwarf cerith, a few chitons, and even a fighting conch in my 220. Love the chitons, they destroy algae on the rocks.

Good luck and keep asking questions!

Where did you get the Chitons? I see very few posted for sale.

 

[Tahoe61]

Where did you get the Chitons? I see very few posted for sale.

Reefcleaners.org has them.

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/fuzzy-chiton