Ideas For Turning Fowlr Into Reef Tank

[chefrossco]

hi guys , im thinking about turning my 50gal FOWLR tank into a reef,

just wondering if you guys had any pearls of wisdom, and which are the easiest corals to begin with,

also apart from food and uv lights , what are the special requirments??

any advise will be duely listened to

many thanks

ross

 

[ben1987]

You dont need a UV to keep corals.

You want lighting as powerful as you can afford. Decent water stats ie as little nitrate as possible. Most FOWLR are overstoked with big messy fish, whats yours like.

Try with some xenia, polyps, leather, toadstool or zoos first.

 

[chefrossco]

2 oc clowns
1 watchman goby
1 false gramma
1 cleaner wrass
1 cleaner shrimp
1 camel/dancing shrimp
3 hemits

so not really too much to turn to reef - what do you think??

 

[ben1987]

Go for it.

If you can afford to, wack some metal halides up. If your going all out reef then sooner or later youll want them anyway, no point in buying lighting more than once. Pretty cheap 2nd hand too. Keep ontop of the water quality and just research what your buying. I mentioned a few easy corals up there ^ My toadstool is one of my faves as its quite big, gives a nice affect and is really easy. Maybe try one of those?

 

[Trod]

I think xenia are a good starting point and clove polyps, they give you nice movement

 

[Alex Brown]

I bought some sponges first, they are great! Mine are growing fine and im 100% glad with the buy.

Alex.

 

[chefrossco]

yeah as for sponges i have picked up a couple of L.R pieces with some on and they are growing fine - with the addition of plancton to the tank,

done a bit of reserch and think im gonna go for some zoos, xenia and leathers to start. and trying to track down a set of halid too - but cant seem to find any second hand --- so if any one has some plse PM me!!

any ways i think ill pick some up at end of month cos i need to get a bit more live rock anyways!!

 

[andywg]

You want lighting as powerful as you can afford.

Not necessarily. There are a number of corals which would not like to be under a 400W MH in a shallow tank.

Far better is to look at what sort of corals you want and tailor the lights you use to that. Also, the limiting growthfactor to many people's tanks is the nutrients/minerals (too high phosphates or too low alk) rather than the lights.

Then there is the fact that a tank with huge amounts of light over it needs a lot of corals to use the light or else it will become an algae nightmare.

 

[rabbut]

I actaully agree with Andy here. Though not a comprehensive servey, most of my corals are now doing better than they were now they are in a shaded area of the tank since re-aranging it earlier... Before, everything was out early-ish morning, and they all closed up arround lunch. That would be that for the day. Since today, all but the Organ pipe are still out (thats directly under a 150W Halide in a 70l tank), and the LPS are fully inflated for once

All the best
Rabbut

 

[ben1987]

I didnt mean wack 5,000 watts of light above a nano.
just didnt really word it very well

 

[chefrossco]

cheers guys.
after doin a bit of internet research i think im gonna stick with my t5's they have served me pretty well so far - so dont fix what aint broke!!!
just ordered some zoo frags and also a cauliflower frag from ebay so hopefully they should take!

wanting to get my hands on some leather frags or complete col, but i think that will be in the next 2 wks

cheers guys

 

[FiSh123FiSh]

If you are still looking for halides I think garybuk is trying to sell some. They are cheap as well.

 

[Gallagher]

You have cleaner wrasse??
how are they to look after, i heard there a bad choice as they just dont eat unless theres a fish to be cleaned?