View Full Version : Is my lighting sufficent for SPS/LPS corals?
Reef Chem
03/12/2011, 09:40 PM
Hello all,
I have been wanting to add more live rock and expand my collection to include SPS and/or LPS corals and maybe even a clam. My current lighting is an AquaticLife T5HO unit, there is one 10k bulb @24w and a 420nm Actinic @ 24w. The tank is an All Glass 10 gallon (so that would be 4.8w per gallon) and I have attached a current picture:
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h412/mkain86/IMG_2573.jpg
Current water chemistry:
420ppm calicum
11dkh alkalinity
~1200 Magnesium
8.0-8.4 PH
77F temp
1.025 salinity
My tank has about 15lbs live rock, live sand (shallow bed), a rock anemone, clown fish, maroon clown, checkboard wrasse, scarlet crab, 4 zombie snails, green star polyps, zooanthids, brown button polyps and two mushroom corals.
DustinB
03/12/2011, 11:10 PM
I'm sure you could get away with LPS no problem. I have some frogspawn in my stock jbj nanocube and it does just fine. You could always try some cheap monticap or birdsnest, see if it holds it's color at different levels in the tank.
Reef Chem
03/13/2011, 12:37 PM
bump
t4zalews
03/13/2011, 12:46 PM
10 gallons is extremely tough to keep SPS and I would suggest against a clam. You'll be fine with LPS and I'd stick with them. Your best bet will be LPS and polyps.
Reef Chem
03/14/2011, 12:50 PM
I'm pretty sure my water chemistry will allow for SPS corals. My issue is the lightning. What do you guys think about my lightning for stony corals? Any suggestions on "easy" and cheap stony corals to start with?
Thanks again.
arentspowell
03/14/2011, 12:54 PM
If you want to try some SPS I would try some monti caps. They are less light demanding and pretty easy to care for. You can also do some LPS that looks more like SPS such as some chalices. Getting some better bulbs will help als like some ATI's. Swap that actinic for a blue+ so you can actually get some usable par.
Reef Chem
03/14/2011, 01:00 PM
Is the actinic bulb solely for aesthetic reasons? arentspowell, is a blue+ a specific bulb?
JustinM
03/14/2011, 01:05 PM
Go for it. I have the 4x24 aquaticlife fixture on my 28 and have no problem growing SPS. As long as you can keep your levels stable, you will have no prob. Def get better bulbs though. I used my stock bulbs for 4 months and still had growth.
t4zalews
03/14/2011, 01:37 PM
birdsnest are easy, so are plating and branching montis. poci's are very easy as well
karsseboom
03/14/2011, 02:54 PM
your water chem might be good today, what about tomarrow? when the water evaporates the chem changes fast. In a 10 gallon that will crash an sps tank in hours. The reason your soft corals are fine is because the corals can handle those swings, you will be very surprised by how senstive these acro are. Look how many people have succes with a 10 gallon sps tank? very very few.
Reef Chem
03/14/2011, 03:16 PM
Thanks for all the replies. I think I'm going to go ahead and try one of the easier to keep sps/lps corals as suggested and see what happens. I know how a 10 gallon can fluctuate as I had this trouble when starting the hobby. I also have a 2 gallon pico and it is almost impossible to have stable levels in it. But, after maintaining it for about a year the levels are better. When comparing this to the 10, the 10 seems pretty simple to keep the levels stable. I used to test daily in these tanks(I was obsessed), I find myself now testing about once a week.
arentspowell
03/14/2011, 03:21 PM
ATI makes the Blue+ it puts out more par. Check out reefgeek, they carry them.
lisafoster
03/14/2011, 03:27 PM
I too would check out the blue plus from ati instead of the actinic bulb. Try the sps everyone has advised you to try. It is totally possible to have sps in a 10 gallon people do it in smaller than that. Just make sure you keep up on water quality because things go wrong quicker than in a large tank. Actinic lighting is solely for aesthetic purposes. Blue plus is like a 15 or 20k.
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