getting started with corals. How to.

[Sk8r]

1. check out your lighting. If you have MH, you can keep anything BUT light-sensitive softies like some zoas, etc...including bubble coral, a stony; or you can, but you have to keep them low in the tank.
If you have T5, you're good for most anything, too---maybe a few of the fussier small-polyp (SPS) corals would fail to thrive. And the same cautions with zoas, etc.
If you have less than that, you're probably fine with buttons and mushrooms, but steer clear of stony coral.

2. first thing to know: stony and softie don't get along all that well. Stonys reach out tentacles and sting and softies don't have tentacles---they just spit into the water (carbon handles this organic irritant) to discourage corals from being close to them. You can keep a mixed tank, but due to the warfare issue, it's harder: you have to keep all your stonies up-current of the softies and still keep them from touching each other.

3. second thing to know: stonies are going to eat a lot of light and calcium: it's food to them. You're going to fare better by planning for this. A 50 g with just a couple of large polyp (LPS) stonies can take up to 4 spoonfuls of calcium a day. This is a pita to hand dose, so you'll fare better with a sump and an ATO (autotopoff) into which you can add your supplement.

4. third thing to know: even if you don't need the heavy calcium supplement, it's a good idea to test alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium weekly, because they're interdependent, and a shortage of alkalinity buffer can give you problems with softies.

5. corals don't add to bioload unless they die. They're living filters. They eat some microlife, a few eat major lumps of food, and they all grow pretty fast. If you keep your water quality up in all 3 parameters, alk, cal, mg, to these levels: alk 8.3-9.3; cal 400-420; mg 1200-1400, you will be just fine. If you're inexperienced at water-hobbies and still tending to have major accidents with your parameters, wait until your tank has been stable for a number of weeks. Corals do NOT tolerate any ammonia at all. You may have to eliminate all filters in your system and go totally live-rock only to be sure nitrate stays in the low single digits and ammonia is 0. Corals can be pretty tolerant of one mistake, but a series of errors begins to make them very unhappy.

6. You have to be sure of your fish: angels and butterflies eat coral. Other fish, that produce a heavy amount of protein waste, ie, big fish, are going to require you to have a really good skimmer to get rid of that item asap. Rabbitfish, especially the scribbled, can take to nipping corals. Check the compatibility charts to find out if your proposed fish has bad habits. Keeping anemones with corals is iffy: if you have a well-behaved anemone, you'll be fine, but if you have one that wanders, it can be a disaster.

7. corals sometimes have parasites, pests, and a very few diseases. You will want to familiarize yourself with the brief dipping protocols for various types of coral. Dip before putting into your tank. If a parasite or coral-munching hitchhiker gets loose, you have a major headache on the way.

They are not that hard to keep at all. For lower-light conditions I'd recommend some simple buttons and mushrooms. For those getting into stony coral, I'd recommend a euphyllia (hammer, frogspawn) or caulestra (candycane) as your first---fast-growing, not a strong stinger, and hardy---or if you're definitely going sps, a montipora or pocillopora is a good starter. Again, fast-growing and forgiving.

[THE ROOK]

Sk8R- Could you direct me to some good info for dipping corals?

[Sk8r]

The lps forum and the sps forums have info for their specific types. There's a zoa forum, and also a corallimorpharian forum: that's mushrooms, believe it or not. There are some preparations sold over the counter, with instructions. Lugols is one of the most universal: it can be used as a preventative dip for stony, softie or leather: always read labels, and just as a precaution, put out an inquiry on a coral you propose to dip and ask. The one dip to be VERY careful with is a freshwater dip: in general, don't do it, unless you know for dead certain that it's ok for that type of coral. Lugols is something you can safely have on hand. Use a polystyrene bucket dedicated to that purpose, check salinity with a refractometer in both bag and bucket, mix your dip, and allow to coral to stay in the air for a moment. If the coral is fully extended, hold it upside down in the bag water waving it very gently to try to get it to retract, never touch its live tissue without gloves, and once you have gotten it to retract, lift it into the air and hold it a minute to let it slime up, then dip it, setting it into the bucket for the required time: always before you lift a membranous coral out of the water, get it to retract. sometimes if you have one that just won't retract so you can take it out of the water, just puff a little significantly cooler water at it from a turkey baster. Always be careful not to rupture its tissues. Be patient. THey don't move fast.

[reefworm]

Nice primer Sk8tr! Point #3 about calcium usage is a real eye-opener. I'd also add to #7 a recommendation to quarantine to make sure parasites are not present before adding to the DT. Easier to deal with in a QT

[Sk8r]

Definitely qt is the safest, best way to go about it. A magnifying glass can help you spot things crawling on your corals, and if you think something is crawling---you bet it is.

Using the ATO for a kalk drip is safe and easy: just 2 tsp Mrs. Wages Pickling lime per gallon of ro/di topoff in a lidded bucket, stirred once, and you've got yourself a kalk drip for zero dollars. At about 5.00 for 2 lbs of kalk powder, it sure beats 18.00 for half a pound of direct calcium supplement---AND it supplements both alk and cal simultaneously with no precipitate. Great bargain!
All you then have to watch is your magnesium, because if it falls low, your other params are going to fall no matter how much you supplement. It's relatively safe (even a topoff accident won't kill anything) and easy to use: a complicated kalk reactor is NOT necessary, just powder in your lidded (tightly lidded) topoff reservoir.

My rig is a 32 g of ro/di in a Rubbermaid Brute trashcan, and a maxijet 1200 pump, gasketed with rolled-up paper towel, and delivered to my tank via my ordinary ATO. I stir it by pouring new ro/di in, the new water dissolves the spare kalk lying at the bottom, and that's all the stirring it needs: ro/di never hypersaturates with kalk: it just absorbs 2 tsp per gallon and the rest lies at the bottom: hence I prop my pump off the bottom so as to avoid that stuff, and pump only the fully mixed stuff.

[Sk8r]

An added note, re growth: I have a 2 year old frag of hammer that started as 3 heads. It now has somewhere between 30 and 60---I've lost count--- and is the size of a soccer bal with a lot of stony skeleton in its heart...if you wonder where all that calcium goes.

[mutateddogbone]

pix please!!!!^^^^^^

[Whys]

Thanks for the advice Sk8r. I was wondering if you could clear up one thing for me. You say Alk should be between 8.3 to 9.3. I know there are a couple of ways to measure Alk, so I'm uncertain which units you are using. I often see Alk recommendations around 2.5 to 4 meq/L, or 7 to 11 dKH, or 125 to 200 ppm. You are measuring in dKH?

[Sk8r]

I use what I think is called the dkh scale, in Salifert tests: the meq/L always looks skimpy to me. Seriously---it's what I'm used to. 7 is too low for most things to be comfy.

You asked for a pic of the monster hammer. Here 't is.

That little caulestra in the corner, about baseball size, also started as 3 heads. The fox in the middle was a gappy, dying mess when I got it: I broke it at a gap, glued the 2 live pieces together where they could support each other, and it seems quite happy now.

It helps to know what a colony-sized specimen of your coral looks like. You can see that all 3 of these like to be a ball. Knowing what a healthy fox looks like, I decided it wanted mutual support. So I fixed one piece up against the other.

[mutateddogbone]

wow that is a very nice hammer. hard to believe it started out as 3 heads

[Sk8r]

I feed it a lot of calcium. Euphyllias are a fun first coral, because they nearly will change before your eyes: you see a head go to a figure 8, and pretty soon you've got 2, and then 4, and 8, and 16---once they get to 16, they get scary. Every head is reproducing as often as it can get the wherewithal.

[mutateddogbone]

do you dose calcium through kalk? and if so how do you supplement MG

[Sk8r]

I drip kalk through my ATO bucket. I test magnesium every couple of weeks, and if low, I dose with Kent Tech M. I don't dose anything else---under the "if you don't test for it don't dose it" rule, which is a good one to follow. Water changes will replace the little trace elements, and the 3 biggies, cal, alk, mg are the ones you have to keep up with.
A kalk drip will serve a tank well up to about a 100g tank: and then you may have to go to a calcium reactor. Reason: the evaporation rate of the tank dictates the kalk drip rate, via ATO. Since that relationship can't be changed, and ro/di only carries a certain amount in solution (you can hype it a little, but only a little by adding white vinegar)...you may reach a point where kalk isn't enough, and you have to use a calcium reactor, which can dissolve pretty well what you want to dissolve.
Some tanks (really big ones) run both, using the kalk to control ph in some arcane fashion (Kalk naturally has a ph of 12, if undilute)---and the reactor to do most of the supplementation. But that's way beyond my little 54g tank. Unless I frag the monster, I may have a 54g hammer coral by this time next year.

[mutateddogbone]

you could always frag and mail some to me! or take them to your LFS and trade for more corals. i only have a 72bow and another ~30 sump/fuge. i was going to do a little bit of everything and just wanted to see if kalk drip would be sufficient for calcium for SPS and LPS

[Sk8r]

should be perfect for you. do this; first use standard hand dosiing to set your params just exactly right.

Then put a shelf of eggcrate lighting grid in your topoff bucket, set your topoff pump on that, stir in enough kalk powder, and let 'er run. Test now and again so mg doesn't fall below 3x your desired calcium level, and it will keep alk and cal pretty well 'on'. Keep adding ro/di or more kalk powder at need and testing and dosing mg periodically, and you will not have to hand-dose alk and cal for a long time.

The only other thing I routinely feed besides feeding the fishes is frozen cyclopeeze. That stuff seems to please the corals as well as the fish. Keep your phosphates low: that will also help your corals (detectable by algae growth in main tank: if you have any, you have spare phosphate). Tend those things, keep your lights up to date, and your corals should thrive.

[dwd5813]

Sk8r, how much does your ato deliver at once? I've been reading up on kalk dosing and I do have an ato that i'm considering using to deliver kalk but it seems as though the amount given in one shot through that would be too much, thus raising ph far too much and generally not being good for any corals. how do you combat this when dosing via ato?

[svynx]

I was going to ask the same thing. My ATO pumps in about a gallon at a time, going through 5 gallons in about 2-3 days. I'm using a regular powerhead for the pump, so I could change it to an aqualifter so it doens't dump a gallon all at once.

[Sk8r]

wow, that's a lot. I use a dual float switch, very sensitive thing, from autotopoff.com ---cheap, too. It squirts in about a gallon a day (my evaporation rate in my 54g)---but a TEASPOON AT A TIME.

I use a maxijet 1200 in my reservoir. Very tough, very responsive little pump. Its exit hose is a 1/2 inch, but if you get a locline tubing and a locline splicer, put the splicer into the end of the 1/2 inch, and band about it tightly with a hose clamp (metal is ok for this, as it will only be in fresh water)---then stick the locline tube onto the free end of this little splicing joint inside the 1/2 inch tube, you've got the drip reduced to locline diameter. This isn't my brilliant idea: the young chap at my lfs put this together for me---wonderful solution.

Just if you are dripping kalk, be sure to bulldog clip that line in place; If it goes all over the carpet, you are in big dutch, because kalk is like powdered chalk, nearly impossible to get out.

I think the sensitivity of the float switch (controlling the pump on-off) is the critical thing in a delicate-squirt topoff.

[dwd5813]

yeah, see that's what worries me. i have the dual switch hang on tank model from autotopoff.com and, while it keeps salinity in check, it runs through a 1/2 inch hose for just about 18 seconds at a time. i guess i'd need a different setup for kalk.

[Sk8r]

It's pretty easy to rig, re the locline. we have the same float. And with multipile gallons of topoff to rig, yours may not be that far off....
If you find that 2 tsp kalk per gallon is a bit much for your tank at the stage you're at, (ie, your tests show the calcium is climbing slightly rather than holding steady) then you can just reduce the saturation a bit.

[dwd5813]

will slowing the flow rate down, like with a locline or a slower pump, make up for the large volume in terms of ph spiking?

[Sk8r]

I would think so, if I'm thinking right: more time to mix, relative to the return pump rate.