A good first coral?
- Thread starter jjman101
- Start date
reef fool
Active Member
Originally posted by mnreefman
reef fool i have many mushrooms with the same lighting, trick to place on bottom and not under direct light
I hear ya MNReefman.
I had to actualy do that myself. Mine were bailing off of rocks left and right when I upgraded my lighting.
I just thought that some other type of coral that can handle that direct light would be a better first coral. I didn't mean to say that shrooms were out for that tank.
I looked up the GSP's and they would be good. It is suggested at least 5 hrs of intense lighting and rated a good coral for beginners in my book by Axelrod on "Corals for the MiniReef Aquarium".
richard rendos
Active Member
I keep mushrooms under 400 watt MH's. I don't think that 175 watt MH's are too intense for mushrooms. They just need to be acclimated to the light.
flamingkingofhe
Active Member
imo another good starter would be a candy cane coral
chinnyr
Member
If you get some gsp's be sure to isolate them somewhere because if they get happy they will take off and cover everything.I just had to remove a huge rock and break off the gsp where they had taken over.I really like them too,don't get me wrong!I just was'nt expecting them to grow like weeds.Here's an old pic of mine from a year ago.They are just opening for the day.The snail was taken out because he was a whelk and liked eating all my other snails!
spsfreak100
Active Member
Originally posted by reef fool
mushrooms may be a little tough with that intense lighting.
As others have already said, As long as the mushrooms are slowely aclamated to the lighting, they should do perfectly fine.
Mine were bailing off of rocks left and right when I upgraded my lighting.
That was most likely the affect from suddenly adding more intense lighting to your tank without aclamating the corals, or, the higher intensity of lighting was stimulating more zooxanthellae reproduction in the tissues of the mushrooms causing them to grow in such mass numbers that they bailed off the rockwork to find another location to spread onto.
zoanthele
I don't mean to have a spelling professor, but Just for future reference, it's zooxanthellae (Zoo-Zan-Thell-E I believe is the "proper" way to pronounce it).
What is the correct way to acclimate them to light and how and what do you guys feed yours?
I would start out with the halides on for 2 hours daily. Every 2-3 days, up the lighting 30 minutes (Example: 2 hours on the first day, 2 hours & 30 minutes the third day, 3 hours on the sixth day, etc.). Keep doing that until you reach the amount of time you want. Leaving the lighting on for 3 hours a week, and then suddenly leaving the lighting on for 5 hours the next day may have awful after effects. It's best to do things as slow as possible. When aclamating the corals, always watch their appearence. If you see any weak polyp extention, "melting" corals, or any other obvious signs of stress, you're rushing the aclamation process. Slow down and take one thing at a time.
Take Care,
Graham