Thanks! Appreciate it.
These corals will definitely work for where I’m at, my issue is that my plan was to take my start as slow as possible in order to mitigate the ugly stage as much as possible. Wanted to give my bacterial population plenty of time to grow, while also adding in pods early and giving them plenty of time to grow as well. With my lights staying off for as long as possible.
Almost no chance of someone offering to hold coral you pick out from the swap. It's one thing if you had them already and had a tank emergency or life crissis. But to aquire corals with the intent of not wanting them until a later date in time, to help your tank mature more is meh. I don't honestly seeing anyone agreeing to do that given the above refrenced circumstances.
I started with live rock, pods, light off for almost two months before I added corals, and still got the ugly phase as soon as I turned on the lights. I’d say just add coral, turn the lights on. I’d say it’s almost inevitable so might as well just get it over with
I want to agree with this sentiment. You are unlikely to avoid the ugly stage. When you turn your lights on, if you do not have herbivores, you will get algae.
Appreciate the honesty! I didnt expect anyone to be able to hold coral for me, but just thought it couldnt hurt to ask. I know it is very hard/takes time to completely avoid the ugly stage, I’m more so just trying to set myself to mitigate it somewhat. We’ll see how I feel my tank is coming along in maybe another week or so, I’ll probably just end up going for it and turning on the lights lol
Thanks! I’ll let you know when I make a final decision. Appreciate you offering to share!
My take along with a few others is to put some easy softy corals as soon as the tank is started. The plugs they come on are more likely to have more micro biome diversity than any product you add to the tank. In this sense the can help in your cause of trying to establish a good bacteria population.
Come to the swap even if you don’t decide to swap corals
Also not to be a harbinger of doom, but getting a bunch of corals from people and sticking them into your new, clean, display might be treacherous. Lots of good people in the club, lots of good and generous corals, but just like any other source, assume it's full of pests and needs dips, scrubs, plugs tossed, and quarantine.
+1. Nothing preventing you from shrooms, GSP, and so on as soon as your baseline, bottled bacteria or rock goes in. Just don't get stuff you'll get overly attached to. What commonly happens is people get one more coral, or one slightly nicer one, and then they start doing silly things at the ugly stage like dumping in chemicals to save the coral they said they wouldn't get attached to.
Of course! Luckily, on my first tank, I never got any major pests, and it was small enough that it was easy to monitor. 40 breeder, had a decent outbreak of flatworms, ID’ed them as caution, not for sure a really bad species, got a sapphire damsel that seemed to eat them up, had one aiptasia on a frag, superglued over it and never saw more, got lucky on that. I want to do better this time, and be more rigorous with dipping and quarantining this time around. I LOVE soft corals, might get some gsp and isolate it to a rock, pom pom xenia is my absolute favorite, but think I’m gonna pass because I dont like how pieces can break off and float around to a new spot, love leathers, but not fond of the toxins they release. Think I want to get a japanese toadstool since they are a slow grower. I want to be LPS focused on this tank, I would love to collect every candy cane morph this time around, maybe a couple acans, and torch, hammers, and frogspawns for the rest. I also want to put montis or maybe cyphastrea on my back glass. Taking this tank slow, not going to rush anything or try to “collect em all” like before. Also want 1 RBTA as well.
I’m at around 2 weeks since things have been wet, 10-11 days since I added dr tims one and only. Wanted to have my test kit before I added the bottled bac. Had a pretty big bacterial bloom before I added the bottled bac, which was interesting
Personally, I think it should be an ultra. That would be my vote. @IOnceWasLegend ?
www.queencitycorals.com
Look like this?
Clarifying:
Smart and Final usually has great plastic deli cups (8 oz? if memory serves); that's where I purchase all of mine.
