Good corals for PC lighting.

[American Flyer]

Can anyone recommend some good corals that would do well under power compact lighting in a 150 gallon tank (72"x18"x28")?

I currently run 2 36" 96 watt 6700/10,000 daylight bulbs and 2 36" 96 watt 420mm/460mm actinic bulbs. The lighting is on an 11 hour on 13 hour off cycle. Lunar lights are run for several hours and then the tank blacks out for the remainder.

I have had good success (meaning they look great and are propagating) with yellow polyps and green star polyps, but I can't seem to get my mushrooms to really open up. I moved some into the shade and lower flow areas and they seem to be doing much better. This led me to believe that my lighting would not be considered "low".

As for flow, I run 2 Koralia 4 (1200 GPH), 1 Aquaclear 70 (400 GPH) and the return from the sump probably adds another 800 GPH. Is this considered moderate or high flow?

With that said, my reef has been up and running for approximately 6 months now and I want to add some additional corals now. I am interested in adding:
- sun polyps (orange);
- torch coral;
- various zoanthids; and
- anthelis/xenia.

Would these be good candidates for my system? If not I would like to hear what some of the veterans think would recommend.

Many thanks.

 

[gavinrobinson]

Can anyone recommend some good corals that would do well under power compact lighting in a 150 gallon tank (72"x18"x28")?

I currently run 2 36" 96 watt 6700/10,000 daylight bulbs and 2 36" 96 watt 420mm/460mm actinic bulbs. The lighting is on an 11 hour on 13 hour off cycle. Lunar lights are run for several hours and then the tank blacks out for the remainder.

I have had good success (meaning they look great and are propagating) with yellow polyps and green star polyps, but I can't seem to get my mushrooms to really open up. I moved some into the shade and lower flow areas and they seem to be doing much better. This led me to believe that my lighting would not be considered "low".

As for flow, I run 2 Koralia 4 (1200 GPH), 1 Aquaclear 70 (400 GPH) and the return from the sump probably adds another 800 GPH. Is this considered moderate or high flow?

With that said, my reef has been up and running for approximately 6 months now and I want to add some additional corals now. I am interested in adding:
- sun polyps (orange);
- torch coral;
- various zoanthids; and
- anthelis/xenia.

Would these be good candidates for my system? If not I would like to hear what some of the veterans think would recommend.

Many thanks.

I'm not a veteran, but what I had when i was running PC lights was Xenia, Polyps, and some Frogspawn. I did also had a Pink Anemone and a bunch of mushrooms that worked out just fine. Everything went well, but of course didn't grow very fast at all. Now that I'm running my MH, everything has really opened up and is starting to grow quite rapidly.

Good luck!

 

[jbishop]

I would say your lighting is still considered low. I bet you could get away with the xenia but not much else.

 

[DawnOctopus]

Someone more experienced can correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the Sun Corals mostly grow from feeding? It's suggested that you put the sun corals in the mouth of a cave, and feed each head separately. If this is true, it seems that they would be a good canidate for your trank.

 

[Jennifer]

Yea 2 - 96 watt pc bulbs on a 28" deep tank is definitely considered low lighting levels. You have decent flow but that is on the moderate side as well. It may have been that the mushrooms were in too direct a flow which they do not like. Place them way up high in the tank in a spot where they are not getting blasted by the current.

If you want to get more corals in there you would need to get better lighting.

- Jenn

edit: or as Dawn just said you could do non photosynthetic corals but you would need to hand feed those everyday.

 

[afboundguy]

I currently have 2 x 96 W PC lighting and I have some softies and some of the lower light demand LPS and everything grows great.

 

[Jennifer]

I currently have 2 x 96 W PC lighting and I have some softies and some of the lower light demand LPS and everything grows great.

True that it is possible to keep corals under pc lights.
But what is the depth of your tank?
He said his is 28" deep.
I myself have had great success keeping corals and nems in a 75 gallon under 4 x 65 watt pc's.

 

[naturebatslast]

I currently have 2 x 96 W PC lighting and I have some softies and some of the lower light demand LPS and everything grows great.

I've had the same starting out, the tank in question is 28" deep. PC's, IME, aren't a good choice for deep tanks.

 

[jbishop]

True that it is possible to keep corals under pc lights.
But what is the depth of your tank?
He said his is 28" deep.
I myself have had great success keeping corals and nems in a 75 gallon under 4 x 65 watt pc's.

Its a 55gal from his signature. I had a deep tank with pcs almost got out of the hobby because everything went so poorly.

 

[jtma508]

I have a 90gal that's 28" deep and am running a Coralife Aqualight (4 x65w PC). I consider it an interim lighting solution but have some frogspawn, finger leather, colt, goniopora, shrooms, zoas and paly's. Everything is doing well and growing. My zoas/palys have doubled in polyp number in a couple months. I'd agree that PC's aren't ideal but I don't think they're as limiting as some would have you believe.

 

[American Flyer]

Thank you all for your advice. It is very helpful.

 

[jbishop]

Have you decided on what you plan to do?