Please, I need help

[fishphreak]

I am upgrading from a 29 gallon tank to a 75 gallon reef.
At the moment I only have a few corals. They were just a test to see if I could keep them alive and healthy before upgrading.
The 75 should be ready really soon and since so many of you have the such beautiful, full looking reef tanks, I thought you would be the ones to ask
How to you go about selecting your coral to get a wide variety of texture, shape, size, etc. to get a full and colorful reef?
Do you mainly just pick your favorite corals?
Or do you choose by their placement requirements. Meaning do you try to get a certain amouth the should be placed on the bottom, then pick one the should be placed in the middle, and then the top. Trying to get a certain amout in each area?
Or something else entirely? How do you do it?
I would be very, very greatful for any ideas, suggestions, or comments, or even book recomendations that might help me out.
Thanks so much!

 

[ophiura]

Well I doubt there is one answer. In part it may be limitations in $$ that leads to limitation in lighting or something that means you keep soft corals and LPS. Could be something like that. Could be people like the movement of softies or the colors of SPS. But they have very different needs. So you may want to look at books or pictures of tanks here and see what attracts your attention. Go to a fish store with corals and watch the movement. See what catches your eye. Kind of a simple idea but it may be the way to come up with ideas of what you like and go from there.

 

[starfishjackedme]

She is right about the lighting. Actually, an all softy tank is really attractive if you have vhos or PCs.

 

[fishphreak]

I was thinking about going with 2x 250 watt MH combined with 4x 55 watt PCs.
I think that lighting should support a fair variety of corals.
I sort of planned on spending about $50 to $100 per coral. There seems to be tons of choices in the price range.
It's my first reef tank so I am a little paranoid that it won't look like what I have pictured.
Basically I want a lot of color and movement. And as much of it as I can possibly fit in tank.
Do you think it would be possible to achieve that look with LPS, softies, and mushrooms?
Thank you so very much for all your help

 

[ophiura]

If movement and color is your thing, I would personally say you definitely want a LPS/soft coral tank.
In addition you will get a wide variety of shapes and sizes from zoos and polyps to mushrooms to leathers, colts, etc to torch, hammer, frogspawn and brains....I could go on! But just thinking about all the different shapes and colors - I think you would be quite happy with it.

 

[fishphreak]

Thank you so much for all your help.
I think that is what I am going to go with. I already have a metallic open brain coral, frogspawn, pipe organ and ricordea that were my test corals. And I was already thinking of adding Candy Cane coral, bubble coral, button coral and probably a short tentacle plate coral, plus whatever else I can come up with I guess.
Thanks for all the help!