Looking to Add Corals

SuperScro

SuperScro

AC Members
Sep 3, 2006
374
0
0
I have been wanting to add corals to my tank for a long time, but I was always set back and was afraid I wasn't ready. Now that the algae problem has disappeared, I am looking to add some corals.

My lighting is in my signature. T5 HO lighting. 4 Bulbs 4x39 watts. 2 Actinics 2 10ks. I have had the bulbs for a year, and I am determining if I should buy new ones now so I don't have to do it suddenly in a few months. Should I get different bulbs? Maybe something other than 10ks.

What should my magnesium and kH levels be?

The corals I would like to get first are assortments of mushrooms and zooanthids. I might add a "hardy" coral first to see how it does.
 
Does your T5 HO fixture have a single reflector or individual reflectors for each bulb?
10,000K bulbs are fine, unless you would like the visual color of your tank to be more blue. If so, you could opt for 12,000K bulbs. I think there might even be 14,000K T5 HO bulbs if you want more blue. It is important to note that in general, as color temperature moves closer to 20,000K, the amount of useable light generated by the bulb tends to decrease.
Normally driven daylight T5 HO bulbs (ie - not run on an IceCap 660 ballast) last 18 - 24 months. Actinics do not last quite as long (12 - 18 months). When shopping around for bulbs, realize that not all actinic bulbs (nor 10,000K daylight bulbs) look the same when lit. Some website have photos of bulbs lit for comparison (aquariumspecialty.com is one of them).

Personally, I'd suggest avoiding bulbs made by Current, as I find them to be visually horrible. For only a couple dollars more per bulb, there are much more visually pleasing bulbs available. I've tried and like the Giesemann and UV Labs bulbs much better than the bulbs Current makes.
 
Also don't count on the picture online looking like the bulb, your screen settings can change color very easily.
 
I was going to add individual reflectors, but someone told me that the fixture comes with one reflector. Not sure what it was at first, but I assume its the "mirror" thing above my bulbs.

I was thinking about getting the bulbs now before I add the corals because I have had the fixture set up since early April of last year.

I don't mind the look of my tank, just wondering if a different spectrum of bulb was better.
 
I'm no expert, but for coral growth, I'd probably go with 2 10k bulbs and 2 14k or maybe 18k. If you can fit in individual reflectors, that would make your light even better. The actinics are really more for our viewing pleasure and to make the colors pop, they don't do much for coral growth, so IMHO, it's almost like a waste of those 2 bulbs when you've only got 4 to begin with. If you want night lights, you can always get a little moonlight strip or spotlight or something like that. Plus, if you get a blue moonlight strip - they're skinny, I believe you can just mount it next to your fixture - you can use it to add blue color to the tank to make the colors pop more. And most of them are LED, I think, so they don't use up much power at all.

Lighting experts feel free to correct me.

If you buy the Master Reef test kit or Reef Master, whatever it is called, it tells you in the test instructions what levels you want to shoot for for a reef tank. You probably won't need to supplement anything, just use a salt mix geared towards reef tanks.

:-)
 
The statement that actinic lighting is only for our viewing pleasure is not entirely correct. Even actinic bulbs produce useable light for photosynthesis, just not as much as daylight bulbs. Visual appearance, when it comes to corals is perhaps as important or more important, for many hobbyists as coral growth rate. In the long run, coral coloration = money. All other factors equal, if given the opportunity to buy a drab brown coral or a brightly colored coral, the preference tends to lean towards the brightly colored coral. The catch is that with some species of corals, the drab brown coral and the brightly colored coral could be the exact same coral (even frags off the same mother colony), just housed under different lighting.

FWIW, only 2 of the 5 T5 HO bulbs (with individual reflectors) on our 90g are daylight bulbs (one 10,000K and one 12,000K; both daylight bulbs are overdriven on an IceCap 660). The other 3 bulbs are actinics. There's everything from green star polyps to Acroporas thriving under our lighting setup.

I wouldn't eliminate the 2 actinic bulbs and replace them with daylights, even if they'd be 14,000K bulbs. I'd stick with 2 actinics and 2 daylights, but that's just me. Considering you're looking to start out with mushrooms and zoas, there will be no short supply of light for those types of corals with the 2 + 2 bulb combination. If you wanted to house far more light demanding corals, then it would be wise to think about changing out one actinic (or maybe both) with a 14,000K bulb.

Forgot to answer your two other questions previously...
Magnesium levels are recommended to be around 1300 ppm.
KH has a broad recommended range... 7 dKH - 12 dKH. I've had the most success when keeping KH in the middle of that range, between 9 - 10 dKH.
 
I think I might buy a new box of salt. Does salt get old and go bad when left out for a while? I haven't changed it since I first set the tank up 18 months ago. Most of it is gone, I was just considering that the old salt contributed to algae growth.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom