Newbie question for coral keepers...

[danieljames]

I currently have a FOWLR set up and am doing some pre-planning and research....I've read through these posts over and again....and have seen many varied opinions on this topic....
I have N.O. lighting....(perfecto style hood) if you will...in which I have replaced the bulbs with....Coralife 10,000k/Actnic lighting.....I was told by a LFS that there are indeed a few select corals that will thrive under sub-par lighting....is this true? I'm not looking to switch over to full reef at this point...but I would not mind having a few corals for visual appeal, possibly something with some swaying movement....I do have good flow in the tank....
I have been told some mushroom corals, or various polyp rocks will thrive under normal lighting so long as the water conditions are stable....and the right spectrum lighting is in place....can anyone give any insight to this?
True not true? If so can you suggest some hardy corals for beginners
THanks

 

[40 galons]

i would agree that mushrooms, kenya trees do well under minimal lighting. i have mushrooms in my refugium that i have lit with only flouresent bulb i bought from wal mart . kenya trees to. so those are the olny ones that i can speak of. although they will survive they arent growing with the flouresents . but im sure that youre lighting is stronger then that.good luck

 

[petjunkie]

How deep is the tank? I've seen mushrooms drop off and waste away under NO lighting because they came from tanks with much more. However I also have some rhodactis mushrooms that were kept in a dark live rock tank that survived at the bottom of a 24" deep tank with NO lights over it. Kenyas don't need much light, if you're willing to feed corals you could get sun corals or dendros, they live off food alone but can mess with water quality.

 

[danieljames]

thanks for the advice.....the tank is 20" deep....However, I would place the mushroom rock closer to the top if I was able to keep any.......I did read that mushrooms spread rapidly....but not under N.O. lighting...is this true?

 

[hunted]

It depends on what lighting enviroment the mushrooms came from. I have one mushroom rock with over 100 mushrooms on it that sits at the top of my 180 right under one of my 400 watt halides, it does great, but it came from a tank with halide lighting. Then about a month ago I put a beautiful Green elephant ear rock with about 40 or so mushrooms on it in my 55 seahorse tank and it was doing great under my T-5 HO, and about 2 weeks after I mounted a 150 halide above the rock and I lost about 60% of it, so i disconnected the light and the remaining mushrooms opened back up. As well I've kept lots of different Anemones under T-5 HO's.