Branching SPS choices?

cjtabares

cjtabares

AC Members
Oct 17, 2007
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Bristol. RI
I have a 100gal(72''x18''x18'') tank and was wondering if there where any branching sps corals that would work in my tank. I have a Nova extreme pro 72'' T5 fixture 468 watts 6-39 watt 10,000°K, 6-39 watt 460 nm actinic. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+3733+13822+18700&pcatid=18700

Some sugestions i was all ready given are;
Bali Green Slimer and montipora digitata.

I am just looking for any suggestions right now. Thanks

Oh and is there any rule for how long you should wait before adding coral to a tank? I asked the 2 lfs i normaly go to and they both told me diffrent. One, that only has salt water, said as soon as i got all my parameters right i could add them, and the other said i should wait at least 6 mouths.

Thanks
 
I'll let others chime in on the types of corals for suggestions.. but as far as when to add corals.. I guess both answers can be correct. If you new to corals in general, 6 months in a good time frame to get familiar with water paremeters, testing, etc before you jump into corals, but the other advice is fine as well if your already comfortable with water parameters. As soon as your tank is stable you can add corals if you wanted to. I have thrown quite a lot of money in corals into (my) newly setup tanks in the last few months without any issues at all. All my live rock was well cured and I used 1/2 the water from an old system into the new one, so there was only a very small fluctuation in water quality for a few days, but other than that no problems and no coral loss.
 
SPS is def the harder to maintain corals...I have yet to keep any other than monti caps which are the easier of most
you will need a really good skimmer for SPS as they love pristine water conditions and also the parameters to be very stable..6 months sounds about right for a new tank and the pro is def enough light
start easy as SPS can get very pricey
 
I have a Coralife 220 super skimmer, i was told by my lfs it was a good model is it good enough for sps?

Should i wait until i have all my fish in the tank, then make sure i can keep good water parameter before i add any coral.

I dont want to add a lot of sps i just love the look of the branching coral. If anyone thinks i should not have any for any reason let me know, i dont want anything to suffer.
 
Your setup should be fine as long as you keep on top of the water quality by testing. I mentioned yesterday in a thread, the 4 test I do religiously are Nitrate/Alk/CA/Mg. The other test I have and do usually tell me I am fine and don't need to make any adjustments (with things like Iodine/Strontium), so IMO those tests are not really needed if you do regular water changes.

The Bali green slimer is an Acropora, one of the "hard" SPS corals to do, but this is a rare acro as it is very easy to care for and grows at an insane rate compared to all others. That is why I think it is a great "branching SPS" coral, especially for beginners. I was a beginner in SPS corals just a year ago, and that was my first SPS coral form a club member. Best and worst thing that person could have done for me. I was always afraid SPS corals would be too hard to do and didn't want to waste money and kill them off because of my lack of knowledge on their requirements.. well, from getting that one frag of SPS and having success, I got "bit by the SPS bug" bad and within 6 months I had given away most of my LPS corals and most of my softies so make room for more SPS corals.

The montipora digitata is also a good easy beginner SPS coral, most monti's and digi's are fairly easy. Even though it is a "Montipora Digitata" people usually split those 2 into different groups.. Montipora is a big group of corals, but most people think of "monti's" as either encrusting or chalicing corals, meaning they spread over the surface of a rock slowly over time, or they grow into plates/cups like a flower. Digitatas on the other hand are more like sticks, grow vertical, and have larger polyps than plating monti's.

Here are pictures out of my tank.

This is the Bali Green Slimer. I have cut it up so much already and given out at least 20+ frags of this coral. I actually have a thread going in my local reef club called "Slime the Central Coast" (of California) giving away frags of this slimer to anyone in my area for free if they want one. It grows so fast I could easily make 6 frags a week.
3139551652_1b5b594809.jpg


And this is what my new Digitata that I picked up a few weeks ago looks like. This is a side by side of the same coral just showing 1 week of growth.
3136899870_010b0c75aa.jpg
 
Yup, as you can see by the white tips.. that is where I cut it and is growing back, sometimes growing back the same as before, sometimes splitting into 2 branches once you cut it. Again though, most acros take a long time to grow and you can usually only get a few frags at a time from most acros.. this green slimer though, I can get probably 6 frags a week off of this thing and still have growth to show.
 
Hey maybe you could send me a frag and we could spreed frags all over both coasts. Just kidding i think i am still a while away from having them in my tank. Are they hard to frag is there much leeway when fraging?
 
SPS corals are usually much easier to frag than LPS/softies. You simply use some cutters, like bone cutters or just strong scissors to cut an SPS coral, then a drop or 2 of superglue on a frag plug and stick the coral on it, hold for 30 seconds and walla, you have a frag. You can even skip the coral plugs and put superglue right on the bottom of the frag you cut and stick it right to the rocks and it will grow/encrust onto the rocks in a short time.
 
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