New local reefer with coral questions

[FitLabb]

Hey everyone! After over 2 decades of keeping freshwater planted tanks (which I still have and love), I finally decided to dive head first into the reef keeping hobby with my older 11 year old son. We’ve had our tank up and running for about 4 weeks now with live rock from our LFS (Red Sea MAX Nano Peninsula 26 Gallon) and are already loving everything about it! We have 2 clownfish, several hermit crabs, and one conch snail, with all doing well…..And other than making a very dumb rookie mistake of not checking the salinity of the salt water we got from our LFS to use for our very first water change 3 weeks ago (the salinity was somewhere around 29-30 ppt, which brought the tank’s salinity down to about 31 ppt, as well as a noticeable decline in all other parameters, which I’ve since slowly brought fully back to where it should be with the salinity back up to 34.5 ppt), everything has been doing well & the tank is fully cycled for about 3 weeks now. Planning on doing a weekly 5 gallon water change going forward to keep everything stable & the phosphates in check (phosphates are currently the only thing that’s not perfect as they’re somewhere between 0.25-0.5 every week, while Nitrates are 10 ppm).

So I wanted to ask the following few questions to all of you experts in the room, as I bought several new corals last week that are sitting on our frag racks in the tank (a variety of zoanthids and one interesting Rhodactis Bounce Mushroom called a TSA Mardi Gras Bounce Mushroom), and we have a couple more coral shipments arriving later this week with 2 Blastos and 2 Aussie Lords from World Wide Corals (assume they’re Micromussa Lordhowensis), and I want to plan the tank out properly and do everything we can to not only keep the corals alive, but thriving.


1. Regarding Zoanthids and the Rhodactis bounce mushroom, I’ve heard so many conflicting things about both online, namely being that Zoanthids should either be placed in lower light areas of the tank or that they can and will thrive in somewhat higher light areas…..I’ve also heard a LOT of conflicting things about the Rhodactis mushrooms either not being an aggressive stinging coral at all, all the way to that they’ll sting and even kill any other coral that comes near them…and yet I’ve seen so many videos with Rhodactis living peacefully close to or touching other species of corals including zoanthids, etc….. What is the truth about both of these things in your experience, and I’m sure there is no one single right answer as I know there may be many variables involved.


2. Are there any aggression/stinging issues we might he face from the Blastos or the Acan/Aussie Lords? I’ve heard Blastos are very peaceful and don’t typically sting anything, but that Acans or Micromussa can potentially be an issue for other corals. Also what PAR ranges do you recommend for Blastos and Acans/Micromussa corals if they’re going to thrive?


3. I’m also planning to get one Duncan in the future, and wondering the same thing regarding if that’s known to be an aggressive coral towards others, or if it would potentially be the victim of any that we already have?


4. What are the differences between Micromussa Amakusensis and Acan/Micromussa Lordhowensis as we’re not sure if both can be kept together or near each other (or if one can be kept with other coral species like Blastos & Zoas easier than the other), or if one is more aggressive than the other.


5. Also wondering if there’s any noticeable difference in the growth rate of Lords, Amakusensis, & Blastos?


I know that’s a lot of questions, but I noticed there are a lot of very experienced and helpful people in here, so thought I’d try asking here in my local group first. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, as it’s greatly appreciated!!!

 

[Kcstoker1]

Hi! Glad your tank is doing so well since it’s so new. You don’t hear of tanks completely cycling in a week very often. It’s pretty early for most of us in here to be adding so much, but best of luck to you. I’ll try to answer the questions you ask that I can speak to and hopefully a few others will chime in, too. I'll mention here that all coral success comes from careful attention to water chemistry and parameters. While you may have gotten lucky with your salinity situation, that may not always be the case.

I've had zoas thrive at all levels across many tanks with the sole exception of my first 75g with its very weak lights. Since then, they've done fairly well and the zoas I have now are insane. I have them low and mid. I don't keep any super high-end corals, so if there are any zoas with extra special needs, I don't know them.

I've never had a bounce shroom, but I've had many Rhodactis. I don't recall them stinging other corals much but I know many of us like to keep them on their own for growth reasons. Once happy, they will grow and split fast and can cover whole rocks and faces quickly. They can cover other corals and if they also sting, double whammy.

I've had the same blastos for years and they seem to only get stung by others. I don't believe they cause any damage themselves, at least I haven't experienced it. Every coral has a defense, though, so maybe others have had different experiences. My experiences with acans are that they're great next to other acans of the same species, but if you mix the species the ugly one always wins and it's over quick. The lords sweepers can get surprisingly long and strip another acan down to nothing overnight if not in hours.

My duncans are fairly peaceful, but they have burned neighbors in the past. I don't believe Duncan's have sweepers, it's the slime that does the damage. So as long as they have some space, they will be fine.

I'm not sure about question #4, I'll defer to true acan cultivators.

Coral growth, however, is the great variable. You can have two similarly sized tanks with the same or similar equipment and lights and good parameters in houses across the street from one another and the growth rates won't be identical, and sometimes not even close.

I used to have a grapes of wrath platygyra that was a favorite in our little club. I'd frag it up once a year and disperse. One friend had it triple in size in a couple months while mine was growing much slower than that. Another friend with great equipment and lots of experience found that the coral didn't grow at all for four or five months and then grew slowly until his tank crashed. I picked up a sunset millepora two years ago at RAP and it stayed the same size for close to 15 months. It only started to really base out and grow last fall and now it's double the size I

Growth is a difficult thing to predict and there's no "right" answer until you see how it grows in your tank.

Good luck with everything.

 

[amoore311]

KC handed the first couple questions easy enough.

I will only add, if they are hairy type rhodactis mushroom they can sting. If they are the common smooth skin rhodactis, they grow very quickly but tend to not sting much.

For #4
Lords have larger polyps and the patterning of colors is a bit different. they can be kept near each other but not touching. Acan wise if the genus and species are not the same, I do not allow them to touch.
Zoas can be near blasto and acan. But I would not advise putting blasto near micromussa.

For #5
There is no real growth rate comparisons to make other than extremely general observations. Especially since there is so much species variation. Acans and blasto both grow rather quick for LPS corals, but it's not something you are going to notice on the daily. A couple months down the road you will look in the tank and say, well dang there's 4-5 more heads there. And it will compound from there.

 

[mattdg]

First off, congratulations and welcome to the Reef Keeping hobby! It is the best hobby there is, full of twists, turns and rewards!

I will forego answering the above questions, as both above replies more than suffice.

It sounds like you are at the point where you really don't need to worry about coral warfare. If you plan ahead, you can keep most species within close proximity and manage accordingly as they start to grow into each other. Very few species of coral have long, aggressive sweepers.

Personally, with such a new system, I'd focus my attention on adding a few hardy species of coral.. waiting and observing for several months. Your system will likely go through a whole bunch of things, before it is able to reliably support a variety of coral species, even if your parameters seem spot on. Coral not getting along, will be the least of your concerns until 2-3 years in, if things are going well.

Let me know if you need some stuff to "test the waters". I have a variety of low cost beginner coral, as I know both Adam and Chris have, as well.

 

[FitLabb]

Thank you to everyone who responded above, as all the answers you gave were very helpful. it’s now a full month later and I’m happy to report that the tank has been very stable and the “ugly stage” was mild and very short lived. I added a couple trochus snails at the start of it which seemed to have a big positive impact on controlling everything, and I haven’t had any other outbreaks of anything since. The only issue I recently battled was one of my zoanthid frags (a very nice green variant with small heads) came down with a bad case of Zoa pox which seems to have mildly spread to a few others in the tank. I treated with 3 days of Furan2 baths for about 20 minutes each time, and all but that green Zoa seemed to recover from it. It’s hard to tell, but the green Zoas haven’t reopened and are looking pretty bad, and I’m not sure if they’re still alive or not. I’m giving them some additional time to hopefully recover and I’m watching the situation carefully.

I added a handful of Blasto and Acan Lord frags, as well as one candy cane coral drag, and aside from one Blasto that got banged up a bit on the way to my house (it seems to be recovering well), they’re all doing well and filling out nicely. I decided to stick with what we have for the time being and see how everything goes for the next couple months, taking all the advice you’ve all given and be patient. The next addition to the tank might be a goby & pistol shrink pair sometime the next month, and I’m going to try to wait until the NY Reef-a-Palooza event to purchase any new corals as I want to be sure things remain stable in the tank while doing my weekly 5 gallon water changes and checking all parameters the day before the water change.

I’ve been really enjoying the hobby so far and can see how & why it gets so addicting and causes people to get more and bigger tanks once you get really into the coral keeping side of things. There are so many types of love to get, but can’t add to this tank due to it being only 26 gallons, so I can already see a larger tank being added to our house sometime down the road (my wife is probably going to kill me if I do that….. Haha!). Anyway, thanks again for all your helpful advice and taking the time to respond in detail as you all have. Seems there are a lot of great people in this community and I hope to meet many of you in the future.