Wife wants color - what will get the BAMM effect ?

[Nyles]

You should post in the meeting thread and ask... Im sure people will bring stuff if they know your coming. Good luck!

[Wiskey]

LPS are often very colorfull too, and with your lighting you could keep those. The green body purple tip frogspawn, neon green candycane, neon green striped open brain, red lobo, blastos, afgans, lots of choices, but I agree your tank is not ready for SPS.

Whiskey

[JY13131]

some of the shrooms have really bright orange/red color as well, that is what I have to BAM up my tank!

[Reef-Keeper]

i cant belive that noone has mentioned a sun coral ...



what is sweet about a sun coral is that they are not photosynthetic (dont need light to feed from). they do require a little extra care (feeding every other day). mine eat mysis like it is candy. this coral started out as about a 5 polyp frag (6 months ago).

[Sprayin70]

Sun corals are beautiful. I may have to buy one!!!

[kalel1976]

Sun Corals are beautiful but you should know that they are not for everyone. They require spot feeding every few days and their polyps are not always extended, which is a bummer because that is what makes them so visually appealing IMOP. The sopt feeding will also add an additional nutrient load to your tank so if this is already an issue I would not recommend them.
I feed my colony a mixture of Cyclopeeze, Reefroids, and mysis with a turkey baster to make sure that most of the food I am target feeding them ends up in their polyps.
Here are some other suggestions if you want to add color and or motion:

Neon Green colored Torch, Hammer, or Frogspawn coral (color & motion)
Blastomussa (color)
Zoa's and Palythoa's (color)
Rhicordea Florida/Yuma (color and they like brighter lights so they should be placed higher in the tank)
Rose BUbble Anemone (Color and Motion)
Hydnopora (Neon Green Color and grows like a branching Acropora but much easier to keep)
Pavona (Color)
Any of the Brain Corals (color)
Fungia (Color)

Just to name a few.

[Reef-Keeper]

i forgot to mention that sun corals CAN be trained to come out during the daylight also. ours come out at night because that is when my wife "feels" like feeding them.

[reef_mom]

I have a sun coral too, and they do need extra care if you are up for the challenge. I cut off the bottom of a 2 ltr bottle and put that over my sun when feeding so that noone steals his food before he gets the chance to eat it. I use a turkey baster and shoot the food into the neck of the bottle and then replace the cap for a little while so that the food can sink. It seems to work for me.

[GordoB]

You can also look for a Green Bubble Coral. They open up huge when they're healthy, and they're definitely colorful. If you go to my tank link, I have a Pink Bubble Coral. It won't help you a whole lot with the color issue, because it's a little neutral, but they're really neat. My GS Maroon Clown loves it......AND my WIFE loves it! It's her favorite coral.

[Loverotties]

Yellow tang!

[Jflip2002]

Id go with a torch, frog spawn, hammer, or even sun coral. I like "flowy" corals... I know there are some torches where the tentacles are brown with green tips, but once in a while at my LFS they have pure green tentacled ones. That'd change some color up.

[Reef-Keeper]

i have some green tenticle / purple tip frogspawn for sale !! $7 per head + shipping. i think it has about 10 heads.

[tdwyatt]

Just a note on what to expect in a tank of your size with as many fishes, etc. as you have. It will be hard to maintain "BAMM" colors in most corals, although there are some that can with the waste products that will exist in a tank with that many creatures. The biggest issue will be that with the presence of the amounts of waste nitrogen and phosphates (associated with the feeding of your fish poops, er, ah... pops ) your system will see, there will be an increase in the numbers of zooxanthellae and their density in the corals, resulting in a beautiful golden brown usually associated with this bloom. This will mask the presence of the photoprotective pigments that give many corals their "BAMM" factor. I am not saying that you won't be able to find specimens that will look great for you, but that you won't be able to say that the way the corals look in a LFS tank will look the same for you after a month of acclimitization to your system. For most of the really showy specimens you will see, high marine fish population densities and showy colors in corals are often hard to get to coexist.

To get the colors of corals to really come out, either you'll need some means of exporting nitrogen and phosphate VERY effectively (frequent large water changes and judicious husbandry) or very low import of food stuffs (and low fish densities) or both to acheive positive results, assuming good lighting and current conditions for the specimens you keep.

The following photos are not photoshop-enhanced and are under 10kK XM bulbs without any actinic enhancement:










MOST of these coral photos are of stonies, but the same holds true for octocorals as well. Zooxanthellae are algae, and just like the filamentious algae, nitrates feed their growth, and phosphates (in the closed aquaria) are usually the growth-limiting factor. Keeping the numbers of these nutrients down is one of the major keys to getting brilliant colors in these creatures.


MY2CW, HTH in making your decisions.

[tabwyo]

Fungias, Ricordias, Hairy shrooms, red/blue/green/striped shrooms, Frogies, Hammers and Zoas should do good ina system like that.

[Sprayin70]

PM'D ya Reef-Keeper.