coral selection

[vinhjamin8302]

Hi all im pretty new to the reef game but certaintly not new to saltwater, ive had a fish only for sometime now and was wanting to go towards the reef spectrum of saltwater, my question is " what is a good beginner coral to go for?'' Friends ive seen have coral that are called "waving hands" i believe but i could be wrong, i like these alot and wanted to know if they were difficult to maintain, if so what can i start off with??

 

[ccCapt]

What type of lighting do you have and what's the size of your tank?

 

[vinhjamin8302]

35 gal and i believe a 2x65 one 50/50 and one 10k i think

 

[dustin_P74]

thats only 3.7 watts pr gallon which really isnt even enough to keep even the lowest of light corals under

 

[ccCapt]

You can keep some low light soft corals with those lights. Mushrooms, zoa's and leathers would be fine.

 

[vinhjamin8302]

ok cool so i think im gonna have to up the light output a little, so i was at petco just now and they have these condylactis anemone, they were like 20 bucks!! but there has to be a catch, do anyone know anything about these?

 

[yote]

You'll need way more light for an anemone than what you have.Most anemones actually reguire more light than most corals.

 

[dustin_P74]

for an anemone you need a well established tank (8 months to a year old) and atleast 8wpg

 

[vinhjamin8302]

Ooo ok thanks guys, besides i did some researching and i dont think that it would've been a good purchase, behavior wise

 

[yote]

Your right.An anemone in a reef is a gamble.It can kill any corals they come in contact with.

 

[Bifferwine]

Good decision to pass on the anemone. They usually only survive in mature tanks that have a lot of light. You can keep lower light corals with your lights, but if you want to keep LPS like frogspawn, hammer, torch, candy canes, blastos, etc, you should upgrade to more powerful lights.