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Bought my first corals


JulioA

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As the title says, I today bought my first 5 corals, not sure what they are but my LFS told me that they're pretty hardy and just need to be fed once or twice a week by pouring a cap full of some coral food I bought. I just put the corals in my tank about 30 minutes ago so they're not fully acclimated yet, I want to know what the best thing to do would be to make sure these guys survive. 

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The bigger one in the first picture is a candycane coral. The top one in the second picture looks like an unhappy acan. The other three are baby rock flower anemones, which will probably wander around until they find spots they like, and might wind up hidden or against the sandbed. If they move, let them move, they'll figure it out.

 

What coral food did you get? Don't just randomly pour it into the tank, corals should be spot-fed. They don't need to be fed, but will grow more if you do. Also, make sure your water parameters are good, including some amount of nitrates and phosphates- corals need those to live. And make sure you have RODI water for topoffs and water changes, corals don't do well in tap water.

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Thank you for educating me, as for the unhappy acan, he looked good in the store, I'm worried I must've hurt it while moving it into its new tank. And the other three little guys have been moving around a lot but mainly moving back and forth in the same area. The food I got I'm not too sure what it is I believe it's phytoplankton it's basically just a liquid with a green tint to it which I was told to just pour a lid full of it in my tank weekly which I'm assuming is not much help, I feed my fish mysis shrimp and my power head blows the remains all over the tank, how do I go by spot feeding these corals? I'm planning to do water changes weekly for a couple weeks until the corals look more healthy and move on to bi-weekly, as for the RODI water, i do top my tank off with that.

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Phytoplankton is good food for SPS corals, but not for LPS and anemones. Mysis is actually better for what you have. To feed them, shut all your pumps off, then set a mysis shrimp on top of each polyp. They'll engulf it. Once they've gotten the food into their mouths, turn the pumps back on. Don't give your fish so much that there's extra food blowing around. It can help if you feed the fish with the pumps off as well, so they can easily get it. 

You can put some phytoplankton into the tank weekly, since you have it, but that will just help to feed pods for your fish to eat.

 

You should test your water before doing potentially unneeded water changes. If you do too many water changes and your nitrates and phosphates get too low, you'll have very unhappy corals. Check your parameters- ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, salinity, and temperature are the very basics. Do you make all your water change water with RODI, or get it from someone who does? 

 

Also, move the two corals (anemones aren't corals) onto your sandbed. They probably need to be acclimated to your lighting. Acans in particular don't need much light or flow. Once they're fully open and puffy, you can start slowly and gradually moving them back up onto the rockwork over the course of at least a week. The acan might want to stay on the sand. 

In future, you should find out what any animal is before buying it, and you should look its needs up online to be sure it's something good for your tank. These should work, but anemones are sensitive to newer tanks, so they may have some problems. 

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Alright thank you, just moved the corals onto the sand bed, will start the feeding technique tomorrow, also my LFS told me how hardy and easy it is to care for these guys so I had to pull the trigger and got home and did my research. Thank you for the help and info, I get my rodi water from the same LFS same with the salt 

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I wouldn't feed them until they fully open up and look comfortable. They do just fine on one or two feedings a week, and more often would probably be too much.

 

How do they look today? 

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Yeah, they look better. Them eating is a good sign, too. Now you just leave 'em alone aside from the feeding, and making sure your nutrients are reasonable. Nitrates shouldn't go lower than 5-10ppm, phosphate shouldn't drop below 0.03ppm. 

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Thank you I appreciate you taking your time out to help me out, I really wanna buy more flower anemones & candy cane corals, do you recommend I wait a few weeks or so to see how my current ones acclimate and how many flower/candy cane corals do you believe my 25 gal can hold, I see that candy cane corals are a bit aggressive so if I do get more I know to not put them near eachother. Thanks

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1 hour ago, JulioA said:

Thank you I appreciate you taking your time out to help me out, I really wanna buy more flower anemones & candy cane corals, do you recommend I wait a few weeks or so to see how my current ones acclimate and how many flower/candy cane corals do you believe my 25 gal can hold, I see that candy cane corals are a bit aggressive so if I do get more I know to not put them near eachother. Thanks

general rule is.. slower is better.. 

 

do some research, have a look at other tanks and ideas, and take your time. Don't be afraid to ask questions here if you're not sure and learn before buying.

 

I'm not trying moan or 'have a go' just don't want see a tank crash or you have problems which could be avoided. Also, don't always rely on why your LFS says, some are good and can be trusted.. others just want to sell things! whereas people on here have very little to gain by giving bad advice 😉

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You should definitely give these guys awhile to make sure they're doing okay. I'd say a month, minimum, especially for the anemones. Watch for any shrinking or other signs of ill health. 

 

You can pretty much fit as many corals in a tank as you can physically get into that tank, without them being in sweeper stinging range of each other. Rock flower anemones get much bigger than yours (look 'em up), so you'll need room for them to grow. Candycane corals can be fragged/pruned to some extent to keep them smaller. 

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