This week's hot topic is Low Light Corals.'

What types of corals can be kept in lower lighting conditions? Maybe with good old fashioned florescent lighting? Corals from deeper waters or perhaps just hardy corals that are able to adapt well.

Post your questions and experiences with low light coral keeping!

what K light or wattage is considered to be low lighting? I'm sure once you go past a certain k or wattage you will be in the mid-to-high range.

Anthelia (sp) a cousin of Xenia.

Green Striped Mushrooms

Leather Coral

Kenya Tree (Capnella sp)

All of these grow like crazy in my 18 inch high 80w of PC lighting. The Kenya Tree has dropped four babies already and the babies are almost has big as the mother. I need to start trading some. The mushrooms have basically taken over the bottom of the tank and look great. They lay flat and spread open really wide. They drop babies maybe once every two weeks. The leather has quadrupled in size in the past 3 months.


Enjoy

I suppose there's no definite range. I know deep water systems are setup with a lot of actinic light, 20,000K I think.

Even though watts/gal isn't the best measurement, I would say a low light system would be 1 watt/gal or less with no metal halides.

I have Anthelia and xenas I have 7watts per gallon in my nano. I had them for 4mo and they wont even spread? What gives I change my water every week and I supplement my tank with idione ,sttrouim and mobley (I know it didn't spell it right.) What gives?

Check your alk. If it is around 8 try to raise it some. I keep mine around 9 to 10 and all my softies grow like weeds.

i would be very interested to hear some more opinions on this topic. i have a boyu cube - 12 gal with 11watt light. at the moment its a 6500K tube but LFS are ordering me a 50/50 actinic bulb.

question is, what can i keep with an 11watt 50/50? could i put mushrooms in if placed high in the tank? what else? i posted this question on the beginners forum and had a few suggestions; mushrooms, yellow polyps, zoos and green star polyps.

but would these do well under such low light?

under my stock nano cube lighting i have xenia, a rock anemone and some zoo's and everything looks and grows great, i'm going to add 32 more watts but just so i can expand. One other thing is in my 40 i have just two home depot 40 watt 48" flourscent bulbs and i have some xenia in there, it dosent really grow much but it is alove and constantly pulsing, so really go with xenia for a while and mushrooms, becuse they can look great and are easy.

before i upgraded my lighting(two times now!) i had a bunch of different mushrooms, some zoos, some yellow polyps, a bubble and hammer(both at the top) and sun coral...that was all in a 12g eclipse with something like 13w of light.

i think with NO lighting youd be able to keep leathers anthelia and xenia up top. some shrooms,zoos,yellow polyps,gsp,and of course non photosynthesetic corals. this would be a good idea for a tank expierement, like a 10 gal with 3 or 4 15 watt NO's. i think i might try it.

-Chris

I had zoo's leathers and a goniopora that opened up fully under NO lighting it was wierd.... opened up more under NO then it does under 130w in a 10 gal.

i think im gonna do the idea with the NO's my friend has a setup for 3 or 4 tubes, and hes gonna gimme some lr to get it started.

-Chris

In my 55g semi-reef i have some xenia and varuios mushrooms that have been living and growing for about 6 mo under the NO strip lignt.

i have a 12 gallon eclip0se with 72 watts would that be good enough to keep some zoos and what not?

that should be enough to have zoanthids.

What kinda babies would be good under 3 watts per gal? I mean that would grow, it doesn't have to be fast, but I want them to be more thank surviving in my tank

What is NO lighting? To the layman it sound like you keep them in the dark..lol

I had mushrooms, star polyps, and a pink colt coral frag(grew three inches) with 1 48" actinic, and 1 48" 20,000k NO flourescent strip light on my 55, and everything was healthy, until a real bad power failure happened and the tank crashed>such a shame. I think it has more to do with intensity, than with watts per gallon.

NO = Normal output (aka regular flourescent tubes)

lightbill-

NO stands for normal output

e.g the normal output for an 18" tube is 15w etc

8W 12"
15W 18"
20W 24"
30W 36"
40W 48"
55W 72"

In my stock nanocube lighting (24watts of 50/50 PC) I have mostly softies, including shrooms, rics, zoos (zooanthus, protopalythoa, palythoa, and parazooanthus), star polyps, and a leather. I also have some LPS that so far seem to be doing well -- blastomussa, candycane, and a hammer.

I kept zoo's, green hairy 'shrooms, anthelia and a whopping leather toadstool in a 10G with 2xNO 18W ( white & Blue ). The zoo's apart, the corals had what "I would call" reasonable growth seeing as it was a very basic setup.