Live Rock? Soft/Hard Corals?!!?!?

[Rooster2410]

Im tracking down everything I need to set up my marine aquarium. Im making a list.

Im looking at the page https://www.livingreefs.com/basic-equipment-list-t19611.html under powerhead.

Can somone give me a brief description or link on the difference between Hard and Soft Corals and Live rock so I know which one to get?

Also a description or link on the different lighting (As far as whats best/and needed)
T5/T8 Fluorescent Lighting
Metal Halide
LED

 

[little_fish]

Hard corals are quite literally hard, so like this coral:

Is a Small Polyped Stony coral.

You can also have large polyp stony coral like this:

It has a fleshy soft part, but has the hard coral skeleton.

There are a few example of soft corals

Soft corals are the easiest to take care of. The can live in "dirty" water and dont require as much flow (10-15x the tank volume per hour) and they also dont require super high lighting. There are great corals to start off with.

Large Polyp corals are the next level up. They need better water and some require more light. Same flow rate. They can also be feed pieces of food for faster growth. These corals can introduced to a newer system and do fine.

Small Polyp corals are the hardest to keep. They require 30+ the tank volume turned over per hour. They also require the highest amount of light. They also quicky die in poor water conditions, and will brown up if there is any dissolved organics in the water. Most people dont get these guys until their tank is around a year old. Most tanks are not mature enough to provide conditions for them to live in until this time.


Also IMO t5 lighting is the way to go. Its cooler running and with the correct bulb number over a tank you can keep anything you want, including the SPS, nems and clams when the tank is mature enough.

MH is also fine, a little bit more costly to run, and they can heat up a tank. Easy solution for this though is to clip a fan on top of the tank.

LED is going to be so awesome! Its getting cheaper all the time, im just waiting for long term studies of coral growth under them to be done (like 5 years) before i switch to them.

 

[the reef kid]

What little fish said...a little more on LED's: they require very small amounts of electricity, and although they cost more to begin with in most cases, the fact that the bulbs don't go bad for ~10 years, you'll save money there. However, you may want to wait a while if you're going to jump on LED's, because new technology is coming out seemingly everyday, since many aspects of them isn't flawless yet, so that may be a reason to wait on those. LPS (large polyp stonies) and softies usually do fine under LED's, but I've only really heard of one real success of keeping SPS (small polyp stonies) under them for over a year.

Welcome to the forum BTW.