coral 101?

[whitedove359]

Know any good books or stuff that talks about actualy maintaining and takeing care of coral and anenomys and other invertibrea? (horrible speller). I already learnd that you have to have certain kinds of equitment, which I already have, but I dont exactly fully understand why...

AND I need to learn things like...I guess you FEED corals?!?!...I dident really relise coral is an animal until recently. So how do you feed them, and with what? Does anybody know any good youtube videos that will show me and teach me some of this stuff?

I need to know things like, how to feed coral, when, and with what. And how much. what corals are compatible with others and what not. same with just about everything...geting and learning about the equitment is one thing...but when it comes to the live stuff, you take full responsibility for the well being of those animals, so I want to learn everything before I even atempt to fill the tank with water, regardless if I have all of the fancy equitment. Because, just the fact that someone may have the equitment, does not mean everything is going to be okay and live... So, HELP. please..

thank you :-)

[XSiVE]

The hobby is advancing pretty quickly, by the time a book gets published it's typically out of date.

your best source of information is going to be the internet. I think Reefkeeping magazine, an online mag, has some pretty good basics.

I don't want to go over every last thing.. but I will give you the biggest tip that I know

water flow: Corals can't move, so they need plenty of water flow in their environment in order for them to intake oxygen and expel waste.

[whitedove359]

thank you...are we talking about water flow like in a plant tank where everything is gently swaying around...or like a turbo jet tornado type thing lol

[adalius]

I still find 'Aquarium Corals: Selection, Husbandry, and Natural History' by Eric Borneman to be a goto reference for corals. Not everything in it is still 100% pertinent (some of the system designs have been shot down over time, but were popular when it was printed) but most of the actual data about the corals themselves is pretty spot on as far as where they're found, what they need in captivity, etc. But aside from that, I do 95% of my research on the internet.

As for your question regarding water flow, most modern systems try to achieve a fairly high rate of flow without leaving any dead spots in the tank for detritus to build up. How much flow is enough is dependent on what you're actually stocking. I've heard everything from 20x the tank volume to 50x the tank volume an hour (so a 100 gallon tank needs 2000 gph - 5000 gph). It's a really loose rule of thumb though because my first tank had about 15x and it flourished pretty well, where as I've seen friends tanks where 50x barely cut it for their stony corals.

You also have the issue of laminar flow vs surging or wave makers. A single fixed position pump might put out a lot of water flow but only in a single direction which would create those dead spots or only be providing a little bit of that flow to a coral on the periphery. To avoid things like that you can use surge tanks, dumpers, SCWD, etc. For my BC29 I use a Hydor Flo on my pump outlet, it just uses water pressure to turn a nozzle and redirects the pump flow in a circle which hits most of my tank and causes a nice swaying motion.

[MyNemesis]

I agree with Mr. Adalius: "I still find 'Aquarium Corals: Selection, Husbandry, and Natural History' by Eric Borneman to be a goto reference for corals." It is still a coffee table book for me and is well worn, for sure. The books tells you a lot about the classification of the animals, special care requirements, feeding, diseases and photographs, toxicity to nearby corals. My copy is full of paperclips, note cards, sticky notes and so on. Buy yourself a Christmas in July present!

[Mike]

Here are some tips for you

Know any good books or stuff that talks about actualy maintaining and takeing care of coral and anenomys and other invertibrea? (horrible speller). I already learnd that you have to have certain kinds of equitment, which I already have, but I dont exactly fully understand why...

What types of equipment do you have? I am sure none of us would have an issue explaining why certain things are important. The most basic piece of equipment is the protein skimmer (after the circulation pump of course. A protein skimmer is basically sea foam in a bottle. It is based on the principle that proteins in salt water will be attracted to air and ride the air so to speak out of the water. Waves make a lot of small micro-bubbles as they go to shore and those bubble attract proteins. This is a basic way that mother nature helps filter the ocean and a way that we use to do the same in our aquariums.

AND I need to learn things like...I guess you FEED corals?!?!...I dident really relise coral is an animal until recently. So how do you feed them, and with what? Does anybody know any good youtube videos that will show me and teach me some of this stuff?

This depends largely on the coral type that you are keeping. Corals with larger fleshy polyps like a brain coral or torch will readily accept things like chunks of krill, mysis, ect. COrals with smaller polyps like acropora species will feed on smaller particulates like golden pearls, artics pods, oyster eggs.

I need to know things like, how to feed coral, when, and with what. And how much. what corals are compatible with others and what not. same with just about everything...geting and learning about the equitment is one thing...but when it comes to the live stuff, you take full responsibility for the well being of those animals, so I want to learn everything before I even atempt to fill the tank with water, regardless if I have all of the fancy equitment. Because, just the fact that someone may have the equitment, does not mean everything is going to be okay and live... So, HELP. please..

you can feed lager polyps corals directly. I tend to feed my acropora in a "broadcast" manner. That simply means I feed things like artic pods to my fish and some of those get caught by the acropora. I also recommend using frozen foods over anything that is dry in a container but that is my preference.
thank you :-)

[cg5071]

you were asking about the equipment you have in another thread but also wanting to be lower maintenance. your ph, co2 and all that i would just skip for right now and look at the basics. you can add those things later. those will take alot of tinkering to get right, but you may be good at that stuff coming from a large fresh water tank.

personally i would start with your skimmer, your return and your flow in the tank, and establish live sand and live rock while you are studying. one study area leads to another,lol when you are searching the web. with those things and waterchanges you can have your basic set up. your lights are already taken care of for now, lucky :) get your basic water chemistry down before trying to change it to get a certain level of this and that.

[whitedove359]

soudns good. Tomrrow im picking up my protine skimmer, and I get my costom made sump on friday, saturday at the latest. Sooo then Am i all set and ready to go? (to just get my tank cycled?) is there anything special i need to do to cycle my tank? or just put the live rock and live sand in and everything will be fine for...say...a month or two with out doing anything? or do I eventualy need to add bacteria or some kind of "cheap" fish to keep the tank from un-cycling?

also, Do i want to add the live rock when the tank is filled with water, or do I want to empty it, place it where I want it, and THEN fill the tank up with salt water? If i use all RO water, it will take me two days to fill the tank up with water. I have a 90 gallon per day RO unite...

[cg5071]

you can do your rock however you feel comfortable doing it. if you are doing something fancy and epoxying your rock together then you would want it empty or you can just arrange it making sure it is stable.

yeah, you are basicly ready to get going with it. you dont even need to run the skimmer while you are cycling it. some people say to throw a piece of shrimp or something in there to kick start your tank. i will say from my experience not to get a damsel to start your tank. they will get territorial even towards adding new coral later (mine ate some and pushed it off the rocks i sat them on) and you will have to catch and return them if you want anything else in your tank,lol. catching them is not easy either with rock in place. it was suggested to me to use a fishhook,lol which i didnt do but i had to move all my rock.

you can find another hardy fish to add after a couple of weeks. clowns are hardy and you want one of those you said.

[whitedove359]

wow. how long can live rock "survive" out side of the walt water?... its kind of hard to aquascape if every rock piece looks differnt, same with driftwood i supose....

[cg5071]

well, i guess most do fancy building out of dry rock usually. in buckets you can keep your rock while stacking it but bacteria starts to die off when exposed to air. bact. is what makes it live.

not all bacteria will die as there is some internally ect. that is how they ship it.

[adalius]

wow. how long can live rock "survive" out side of the walt water?... its kind of hard to aquascape if every rock piece looks differnt, same with driftwood i supose....

They ship it usually with just damp newspaper or similar to keep the rock wet and it'll keep for a couple days in the mail like that. You might get *some* die off from keeping it like that, but by and large the rock will be fine and bacterially active.

Are you starting with 100% cured live rock or are you going to use bare (i.e. dead) rock for most of it and just a little bit of live rock to seed it, or what? You really can go all sorts of ways, I've seen it done with 100% dead rock and then live sand added afterwards to help seed it, but it takes a long time to cycle then and you don't have all the cool growth on the live rock, or you can start with all live rock and it'll cycle very quickly with all sorts of cool things to watch that come on the rock itself (worms, sponges, algaes, etc), or you can do any mix inbetween...

[whitedove359]

Ill do a litle bit of everything.