Needing help choosing corals.

[Reefkeeper18]

:help: I'm looking to get a 250 gallon tank(or so) and stock it with many peaceful reef fish (ie ocellaris clownfish, blue hippo tang,etc) none of these fish are at all harmful to corals and i need some help picking out what corals to get. I was thinking sps corals wouldd be the best but i'm not quite sure. The water temp would be 76-78degrees F salinity would be between1.022 and 1.025 and the ph would be 8.1-8.4 the DKH would be 8-12. I have done a lot of looking into on the fish but am stuck on the coral. The sps corals i am looking at are as follows: green apple cap coral, purple rim montipora confusa, red candy cap coral, and pink birdsnest coral. If you have any suggestions for other types of coral comment and if you think i should get a different type of coral (ex lps) also comment. And also if the waterflow is moderate is that strong enough for the blue hippo tang? Thx reefkeeper18

[HN1]

The corals you listed are generally the "easy" SPS so with adequate flow, lighting, and PWCs you should be fine IMO. I'd personally recommend raising your target temps to ~80. The tang should be fine in that large of a tank. As always, just be sure to stock gradually with an eye on your test results.

Sure would love a pic to live vicariously! Just the thought of a 250 reef has me drooling! :)

[Reefkeeper18]

k thx a lot i've gotten really stuck on the issue of corals lately. :hmm3grin2orange: the reason the water temp is so specefic is because i have picked some pickier fish to go in my reef tank

[labnjab]

Depends on how heavily stocked in sps you want it. The more sps, the more difficult it is to maintain. You need to maintain constant alkalinity and calcium and keep the nutrients low in order to keep them growing, as well as good flow and intense lighting. Once you get dosing down, which can take a while, I'd say they can be fairly easy to maintain

For an example, our 75 gallon is sps dominant and they grow like weeds and its been a challenge getting calcium and alkalinity stable because of how fast they grow. Until the last month or 2, we were still having trouble keeping alk stable, but now we have it figured out. We have roughly 110 lbs live rock, a 20 gallon sump, large skimmer, 2x250 watt metal halides, and about 3500 gph of flow between the powerheads and return pump. To maintain calcium and alk we have a calcium reactor rated for 400 gallons filled with ARM media plus we have to dose Red sea max calk nightly. To keep nutrients down we run a lot of GFO in a large reactor and change that monthly and we also run carbon in another reactor that gets changed every other week. We also do 20% weekly water changes. At our acros are growing so fast we have to trim them monthly to keep them from fighting each other

What are the dimensions of the tank? I would go halides for that size. 1 Bulb/reflector for every 2 feet of length. Depending on how deep it is I would go at least 250 watt, but if its a deep tank 400 watt would be best

[Reefkeeper18]

wow that was really helpful thanks.

[Reefkeeper18]

I'm looking to get a 250 gallon sps reef tank and these are the fish i am going to put in the tank.1 starry blenny, 3 mated pairs of ocellaris clownfish and a bubbletip anemone for each pair, 1 kole tang, 3 blue hippo tangs carpenter's flasher wrasse, 1 flame angelfish, 4 flame hawkfish(one male 3 female), and 1 coral beauty angelfish. Are these fish going to all get along? Are they able to live in the same tank? Will they fight over algae? Will they eat or destroy sps corals?