Putting Corals in the aquarium

[boojncarla]

hey there everyone... ive been running a 75 gallon saltwater aquarium but i have not placed any corals yet. is it ok to put corals? if so what exactly do i need? can anyone help me please help.... im really excited to get corals. thanks in advanc e for your replies.

[Poseidon]

How long has your tank been up, and what lights do you have?

[Ninong]

Hoy boojncarla, welcome to Reefland! Kamusta?

What do you have in your 75-gallon aquarium now? Do you have any sand? Any live rock? What sort of filtration are you running? Is this tank indoors or outdoors? What is the lighting?

Are you collecting your own livestock or buying it?

[boojncarla]

hey there well i have three actinic lights. 2 blue and 1 white... i do have live rocks and gravel... not sand. i have about 10 fishes in my set up and have been running my aquarium for more or less a year now... maybe even more and i really want to put corals.... i p laced some before but they just died after a few weeks or so... i wanna try the out again but i really dont know how to go about it. can any of you guys help me? thanks. hey ninong kamsta din?

[Ninong]

Are you using natural seawater or artificial (salt mix) seawater? Have you tested your water? You probably need to get some good test kits and measure your nitrates. It's possible that with 10 fish and a gravel substrate that you may be running between 50 to 150 ppm nitrates. That's not too high for fish but much too high for most corals.

Besides nitrates, you would need to know what your calcium and alkalinity levels are. If your lighting is just three 4-ft normal output fluorescent lamps (two actinic and one actinic white), that's only 120 watts total and not enough for most corals. You should be able to keep some low light mushrooms and a few low light softies. You could increase your intensity by switching to two daylight lamps and one actinic lamp. That wouldn't be as blue looking but it would have more total PAR (photosynthetically active radiation).

You really need either four 110w VHO fluorescents or a couple of metal halide lamps. I'm not sure what you have available over there, so VHO may not be available and metal halide may be extremely expensive.

[boojncarla]

hey ninong... im using salt mix but im really not familiar with all those scientific stuff... so r u saying i cant put corals yet?? where can i get thise lights ure saying? sorry im kinda dumb when it comes to these stuff.

[boojncarla]

hey ninong what exactly are daylight lamps and where can i get them? do they haveit in mc home depot or in cartimar? how much would they cost? i really wanna put corals eh... and if ever what are the low light corals aside from mushrooms?