Low Light Corals?

acrylic_300

AC Members
May 9, 2005
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57
Missouri
I just recieved a 300 gal. tank as a gift. It's set up with 250lbs of base rock and 60 lbs of live rock. The lighting is low 4x 30 watt triton 36 in. bulbs and 1x 40 watt acnic 48 in. bulb. It gets 3 hours of direct sunlight in the evening and the live rock is heaped up in a 100 gal. area that recieves the most light.
The lighting seems bright and is aesthetecly pleasing I dont plan on changing it anytime soon. Are there any corals that would work in this invironment?
 
mushrooms, polyps, many leathers, chili coral....all are hardy and can do fine in your light set up..watch out for the natural sunlight and algae growth...thats gonna be a hell of a reef tank! Have fun!
 
Thanks, I needed to hear that. I scrub the front side daily--the algae doesn't seem to be growing anywhere else "yet" (I think the snails and crabs eat it). I can always pull the blinds If it gets out of hand though.
 
WOW!!! 300 gallon reef tank! Be sure to post some pictures :cool2:
 
thats a nice gift... it depends on how tall the tank is for what corals those lights can keep.
 
It's 30 in. deep minus 4 in. sand. the rock is heaped up 7 in. from the top (lights). Only pics I have so far is me inside buffing the scratches out. I stayed inside it for about 14 hours polishing. I'll try to get some pics tonight--I wasn't going to bother unless there is a chance it will grow and change.
 
Thats a very nice sized tank, and has a good amount of rock (may need more? don't know how it looks in there). What do you have for a filter? Since all this was a gift I wouldn't hesitate to spend some money on lights. Even T-5 lighting is affordable and could grow any coral (if you have the max bulbs fit under there.) What do you want to keep... or are you only looking for corals becuase you don't want to change the lights. It would look better with different lights on it, if you think it looks good now :)
 
Sorry I wish I knew what filter this is. A pre filtered overflow drains into two rotating sprinklers onto two rolls of bio media then down into a bio ball chamber. This is pumped back by an Iwaki 17 gal. a minute pump. Half goes to the tank via an ocean canister--the other half circulates through a built in skimmer and back to the bio ball chamber. Also a small stream goes into a series of nitrate filters and comes out in the skimmer. The flow inside the tank is kinda slow--I may hook a seperate pump to the ocean canister. I have a 25 ppm nitrate problem going on at the moment--im going to wait 30 days or so and see if that changes. Iv'e only got a few crabs and snails at the moment and im feeding half a chopped dead shrimp every other day for the live sand creatures to populate.
 
The nitrates problem could be the tank cycling (when was it setup) or becuase of the bioball wet/dry filtration you have set up.

So what about the plans for the tank, Fish Only, Soft Corals, LPS, SPS?
 
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