Corals

[discusking86]

Hi, Ok a few questions. I have a five gallon with wet dry filteration,and calpernia. The tank water params are as folows:nitrite 0, ammonia: 0, Nitrate .05, ph:8.4 and SPG:1.025. I have one 13 watt atnic and one 13 watt daylight. about 4lbs of LR. Livestock consistes of one gold chromis, hawaiian feather duster adn red brain coral. What other corals would be approriate for ths set up. I was thinking maybe a frogspawn and elegance. Would thes work? What else would?

[LITTLEFISHEE]

Post a pic of your setup, I'd like to know what type of filter media you use. Your trate should be 0-I'm wondering if your filter isn't working as well as it should. Elegance corals are kinda iffy, normally they are being collected from deeper waters as reefs have been picked clean, so they don't adapt so well in aquariums. Frogspawn might not be a good idea in a 5g, it can put out some long sweepers. Mine is normally 5", but it always has a couple tents at about 7", which leads me to believe it will be 7" soon. About the lighting: is it 2X13 or 1 13 watt 50/50? Either way, as long as your h20 is stable and you get the trate down to 0, you could get ricordia, rhodactis, actinodiscus or discosoma shrooms. If you really want LPS, and you have sand (I'm assuming you do), try a plate coral (fungia sp, not heliofungia sp). There are a lot of corals you could have as long as you know how long the sweepers can get.

[movingshadow]

I'm not quite sure I agree on having zero 'trates. If you are planning on keeping softies or leathers like sinularia or the like, they actually do better with a slight amount of nitrates in the water. Fossa & Nilsen have stated that even levels of up to 40+ppm are still tolerable for most corals if stable at, I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but you shouldn't worry about having 5ppm (if it is stable at that level!!). I think a stable system with 5ppm of nitrates will run smother than one with nonmeasurable trates that spike to 5+ every now and then due to feeding, water changes or the like.

 

I hope my post isn't too confusing! again, I'm not advocating a high nitrate level, I'm simply stating that unless you are wanting to keep crazy colored fiji acropora (which wont work under your lights anyway) you don't need absolute nutrient free water...

JMHO though....

[LITTLEFISHEE]

I've never heard that leathers like nitrate. That could be the reason why I've never been able to keep one past 3 months. Having 5ppm of nitrates isn't something to worry about, I agree with you. I just think that if you aren't careful, the levels can increase to 20ppm or higher very quickly. I don't know if I'd ever let mine get up to 5ppm now, let alone 40ppm!

[discusking86]

regarding the trates, yeah they have been pretty stable for like bout 2 months. Sorry littlefishee, I would love to put pics of my set up on the web, but sadly I dont have a digital camera as soon as I get one then I will how difficult are leathers to keep. I had one in my 18gal and it got a wazy film on it and died. I think it might have been because of the large bubble coral I had in the tank, but I dont want this to happen again. Littlefishee, A plate coral sounds cool, and I purposly left most of the tanks front sand. Would a tongue coral do well in this set up?

[discusking86]

oh and the filter media is plastic balls and on each side there is a overflow and covering the overflow is a small carbon filter. Hope this makes sense.

[Warboz]

IMO my trates read at 5 - 10 ppm but have been constant for some time now. I'm working on getting a fuge but I'm not too worried about it. Everthing seems happy and no worries.