lighting question

[tony53176]

hey guys,

I had a quick question about my lighting and what kinds of corals I could possibly keep.

I'm gonna be honest the light fixture that I have is not the best out there, its an Odyssea T5 4X54w fixture and it has a single reflector. Like I said I know its not the best but its the best I could afford at this point in time.

I know keeping SPS corals is pretty much out of the question. That said I think I would like to have mostly ricordea mushrooms, polyps zoanthids, sympodium and palythoas and some LPS like candy cane coral, frogspawn, flowerpot and hammer corals

any input would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[fab1971]

I think those lights are fine for those corals, imo.

[Ron Reefman]

The list of corals you gave shold be OK. Some will grow well with that light and some of the others might need to be a bit higher in the water in order to do well, but keeping them alive shouldn't be much of an issue. Of course this all assumes good water chemistry and so on. It sounds like you have enough flow given your powerheads. The flowerpot is the only one I'd do some serious research on.

[tony53176]

thanks guys thats awesome, I'm sure down the road I will upgrade my lighting but not for some time.

I will certainly research the flowerpot a lot to make sure its something I can keep.

As far as my chemistry goes I think its looking good Ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates 5, phosphates 0, calcium 480 and dkh is 12 I'm not sure what else I need to measure but those are my parameters so far.

[tony53176]

correction the phosphates are 0.25 but I believe those should be coming down as I put in some chaeto on Friday and already my nitrates have gone from 20ppm down to between 0 and 5ppm its not exactly 5 but its not 0 either lol

[blesk]

Try tu bring your phosphates litle lover under 0.1 best tu 0.04 or 0.03

[tony53176]

yeah if the chaeto doesn't bring it down then I'll use a reactor to bring it down.

about when can I start thinking about adding corals? the tank is only a month old. I was hoping I could add some in May.