[Pomme]

acropora?

hi i am new to the marine hobby and have set-up a reef tank that has been running for the past 2 months. It is a 100 gal, and it has two overflow weirs going down to a sump that is about 60 litres. I have a deltec fuidised bed full of rowa-phos, a deltec apf600 skimmer nad a deltec hlp 4040 pump to return the water to the tank. I have in the sump a section that has caulerpa in it, and i use kent marine additives. In the tank there is around 70kg of live rock. In the tank there is a tunze stram pump that moves 7000 l/h. The tank has also got the arcadia series 3 250watt metal halide over the tank, it is a singla light and it has two actinics for a 100cm long tank.

It currently holds lots of soft corals, like mushrooms, ployps, leathers, clam, trumpet coral, and a coral that is like a anem but isnt as it is like a hard coral base (but i cant remember the number), and a plate coral.

the live stock is 2 common clowns, a regal tang, and a cleaner wrasse.

i will in the future look to add a yellow tang.

All the paramiters are fine: ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are 0. So are phosphate and iron are 0. the specific gravity is 1.023 and the ph 8.5 the temp 25. And the calcium is 440 and the kh 15.

I would like to get some acropora in the tank in the future, i know it is a stony coral, but i have had varying levels of difficulty told to me about them, as some retailers have said its okay to put in from the start as others have said wait years? What do you guys think about this? Is it hard to keep, and if you guys would suggest it what sort of time would you put it in your tank?

thanx in advance,
andrew

[zhenya]

Hi Pomme,

If I may make one suggestion, I would start by adding a different hard coral like Montipora sp. to try your hand and see if you can maintain them and then,after your tank matures a bit more and you gain some experience keeping those,I would try a Acropora sp. coral,preferably tank raised fragments.
The reason I said this is that more often then not newly set up tanks don't have the stability yet that those corals require and starting with the easier maintanance corals would be a smarter thing to do,IMO. However,I am not saying that your current set up is not appropriate for the Acropora species,I think it is a nice set up and will allow you to keep a nice enough variety.I would suggest keeping them in the middle to upper portion of the tank when you do introduce them to your tank.
There is couple of other issues like soft corals that sometimes wage quite a chemical warfare that can cause some serious problems for Acroporas and it should be carefully monitored in the future.
I'm sure other Acropora keepers will chime in soon enough and provide more details. I just would like to recommend one more thing and that is getting a good book about Acropora species.By good book I mean a book that describes those corals in the wild and also their requirements for keeping in the aquariums.
Eric Bornemans "Aquarium Corals" comes to mind as one of the really good books.

Good luck!

[Pomme]

yeah already got the book

yeah that is a good thought i think i may get a frag and see how it does?

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Pomme

yeah already got the book

There you go,Andrew! I think you are on the right track already
While you are reading that book you might rethink your idea of getting that yellow tang as I think having a regal tang probably maxes out your tanks capacity on tang residents

[Pomme]

yeah true although i thought they would be okay as they are so different?