Originally Posted by
zoogrl03
http:///forum/post/2534045
I love your aquarium set up. Beautiful! I have a couple questions for you? I have had my 72gal. aquarium since the begin of jan. I have not purchased any type of coral yet, but am planning on it within a week or two. If you answer these questions it would be very appreciated and i am asking you because i think you started your tank about the same time and it looks amazing. so question 1: when you buy your corals do u just put them on the sand bed or do you just set them on top of LR and let them do their thing? I am really confused on that. No matter how much i read that is a question I can't seemd to get answered. I guess I don't understand how they stay in one place so quickly after being set in the tank! Question 2: Do you have to feed all of those corals individually? It seems like that would take a lot of time...and how often do you feed? Last Question: Do you have to add calcium or other supplements to keep the corals alive? I am really hoping to get my tank looking better here so if you could help i would love it! Thanks!!!
Well, first off thanks for the compliment on the tank. I am really loving it right now! It has gotten to the point where I am really not having to spend a whole lot of time on it anymore and it is doing pretty well.
As far as your questions go, most of the time corals that you buy at the fish store come on small bits of rubble. This makes it so that you can place the rubble on your live rock on a stable place. If you need you can use what is called reef epoxy , which is basically a silly puddy-like material that you can use to secure the piece of rubble to your LR. You can also use just regular “Krazy Glue” to glue your coral to a piece of rubble or to a “reef disc” which is a small circular disc to which you can secure your coral.
I just basically find a good spot for my new coral on the LR and place it there.
As far as feeding your corals are concerned, soft corals like zoo polyps get most all of their nutrition from proper lighting. So assuming that your lighting is up to par you should be ok. I feed my mushrooms and some LPS such as open brain corals and candy cane corals some small mysis shrimp directly using a turkey baster. Other than that, if your corals is a filter feeder like some types of LPS corals or xenia or something of that nature, I would use DT’s Live Phytoplankton. This stuff is for filter feeders and it is just added directly into the tank once a week or so. The filter feeders will remove the phytoplankton from the water column.
As far as supplements are concerned , I am no expert at all but I keep close tabs on 2 things: Alkalinity and Calcium. If you don’t have any hard corals, Calcium is not a major concern. Calcium is only a large concern if you have hard corals that use the calcium to excrete their skeleton.
Alkalinity is very important for all inhabitants of your tank. Proper ALK levels shield against large swings in PH. I highly recommend getting test kits for ALK ( and calcium if you have hard corals).
I alternate between adding Alk and Calcium in my top off water every other day. I just add about 1 tablespoon into my top off water. It is recommend to space out the time between adding Alk or Calcium, that is why I only add one type of buffer each day. The amount and frequency that you will have to add supplements depends on your individual tank’s needs , so get some test kits and learn from trial and error!!
Good luck and I hope my limited knowledge has been of some help to you.
