Underwater Garden, corals are wonderful for your reef aquarium as well as any color, structure, biological filtration and movement. It also makes your fish feel a more natural environment.
Corals are the main ingredients for your under water garden and help filter out un eaten fish food from the water. Keep your calcium levels around 450. As calcium light and floating the tritons are what your corals need to thrive. Here is an example of how quickly your corals can grow. This is seen here we put in the demo tank and here is the same Xenia only 6 months later. You can place small frogs in your tank and with the right care, they will grow into beautiful coral colonies. I don’t like to initially secure coral to live rock. If the coral does not do well in one location of the tank, such as post to the light, you can move it towards the bottom of the tank or shade your area.
One advantage of halogen lighting, it creates poles of lightning dark. So it gives you more choices of were to put your corals. If you intend to make hard and soft corals, then make sure you give then enough space in between. If corals are put too close to each other, they will often fight each other for space. These fights sometimes take months. However this interactions in your tank can be very educational and fascinating.
If you buy large corals, one way you could put them in your tank is just place them on the rock. Some corals like spongy plate coral is better of on the substrate.
If you get small frogs, you can attach them to this small piece of live rock using a quick drying adhesive. Dry of the rock and the frog. Put the glue on the rock and attached the frog.
Being out of the water for a few minutes wont hurt the frog. It's just like low tide.
After about 30seconds the live rock piece can be attached to the main body of the rock by using under water epoxy.
You can take cuttings of your corals to help them spread throughout your tank. Take a pair of clippers and cut a hole section of the coral. This Xenia we placed on the rock and attached it to rock with fishing line. Tie the line just tight enough to hold the coral on and not so tight as to cut in to the tissue. We then place the rock with the frog back in to the main tank. The cutting should attached it self to the rock and you can cut the line in a few weeks. If your coral has done well in the spot in your tank, put the cutting in the spot which similar light and water flow.
Rubber bonding is also another way to propagate your soft corals. Here we take the healthy Colt coral from our demo tank. We then snip off the stock for a new frog. We take a rubber bond or two and attached it to a small piece of live rock. In the bottom of the rubber bond should disappear and the coral should attached his self to the main body of the live rock, I advice knowing the corals before attaching them to the main body of the live rock, so they get the proper lighting of water flow, now for our coral system.
We will put a graphic which each coral giving you a recommended lighting and giving our opinion how hearty it is. The hearty ness will range from difficult, medium, hearty and very hardy. Our lighting graphic will consist of Halogen, Fluorescent, and all types of lighting. I like to leave my lights on anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day. Your corals and fish will adjust if you only want to leave your lights on 68 hours per day. Please keep in mind that our coral rating system is based on very good water quality. Corals we list as very hearty wont last long in poor water quality.
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