Caulastrea Furcata - My First Coral

             My Candy Cane Coral is finally in my 20 Gallon Nano Reef Tank. It’s time to put my research to the test and see how this coral holds up in my aquarium. I have a video on my channel here, AquariumsByZero, showing the coral in my aquarium and outlining my experiences with the coral over the first couple days in the tank. We will start by looking at how the coral was acclimated, and then move on to some of my early observations of the coral.



20 Gallon Nano - Caulastrea furcata in PVC holder at bottom of tank.



            So I started out by searching around for guides on how to acclimate corals, turns out there really doesn’t appear to be one. However I did find a bunch of different methods that people have used throughout the hobby, everything from full blow drip acclimations to cut the bag and drop the coral in. I didn’t feel comfortable with the latter method, and wouldn’t mind the drip acclimation but it doesn’t seem to be that popular. So I tried to aim for somewhere in the middle. Also, I found an acclimation method called Photo acclimation. I tried to find a happy medium to acclimate the coral for water chemistry, while including the photo acclimation method.

            I started simply by turning off all the lights in the aquarium, and floating the bag in the water for about 30 minutes. This was simply to equal out the water temperature between the aquarium and the bag. After that, I cut the top of the bag open, and emptied out some of the water in the bag. Then slowly introduced aquarium water into the bag I did this for about 45 minutes. After this, I placed a 1” PVC union fitting in the sand bed and then I grabbed the coral from the base and placed it in the fitting to hold it upright.

            After this, I tried to employ the photo acclimation method. Basically I kept the light off for a couple hours once the coral was in the aquarium. Then I turned the actinic bulbs on for a couple hours before turning the daylights on for only a couple hours then turned them off. I left all the lights off again over night, and then I started my normal light cycle back up.

            So this being my first time acclimating corals, I was trying to be as careful as possible.  I did find a problem with the photo acclimation method I was referencing. Basically, this method called for changing the light cycle whenever a new coral was added to the aquarium, I really don’t see this being an option once multiple corals have been introduced to the aquarium. So I didn’t employ the photo acclimation method on a full scale.

Caulastrea furcata Under Actinic lighting - First day in tank.

            So now, just some quick observations about the coral; I’ve only had it in the aquarium for about a week, and it hasn’t fully opened up yet. I have a feeling the flow of the water where it is currently place is causing it to close up at this time. I have plans to move it closer to the light and further from the direct flow of the power heads.

            The colors are impressive, and they really stand out in the actinic as well as the LED lunar lights. speaking of the lighting, I am also thinking about adjusting the cycle, currently I run the LED’s all night, I might have the lunar lights turn off for 4 hours or so in the middle of the night every night, and see how the coral takes to this change.

            But overall the coral seems to be doing alright, but I imagine it will be a long time before it’s fully adjusted to my aquarium. When the Coral is fully opened, I will definitely have an Update here, as well as a Video on my Youtube about the coral. Hopefully when this is all said and done, I can do a full scale write up on the coral, its requirements and put some info out for people who are looking at this coral for there own Reef setup.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave me a comment.

Zero 

20 Gallon Nano Reef - The first Coral

           So it’s been a little over a month since I got my 20 gallon Nano Reef tank online. As of right now, my tank is cycled and my clean up crew is hard at work. To see the progress the tank has made to this point, visit my Youtube channel here, AquariumsByZero. So now it’s finally time to get my first coral in the tank. I’ve been doing plenty of research in magazines, text books, forums, and websites, anywhere I could find information on different corals. I’m pretty confident I know what corals I want in the tank overall, but now I have to decide what coral I want to be my first coral in the tank. I wanted this coral to be a simple coral I could use to learn from and will hold up against any mistakes I may make during this process. So after all the info I’ve found, I’ve narrowed it down to one, the Candy Cane Coral. I choose Caulastrea Furcata, A.k.a. Candy Cane Coral, for a couple main reasons; its Hardy and its requirement are easily met.



20 Gallon Nano Reef Cycle Complete without any coral



            So first, let’s look at the resilient nature of the Candy Cane Coral. An aspect of this coral that continually comes up in my research was its ability to hold up to less then perfect water conditions. This characteristic often lands C. Furcata in the category of beginner corals.  I’m fairly new to the Nano reef hobby, but in the freshwater hobby water quality is important, but there is defiantly some room for error in comparison to the marine hobby. When you break the marine hobby down into the reef aquarium world the margin of mistake gets even narrower. So while I’m trying to be as conscious of my water quality as possible, I’m still getting the hang of the hobby and a coral that will be forgiving sounds like a great place to start.  

            The next aspect of C. Furcata that makes it my first choice is its aquarium requirements. Its lighting, water flow, and feeding requirements make this coral a simple one to adapt to most reef aquarium settings.

            Its lighting requirements seem pretty simple. A lot of my research shows this coral will survive under many lighting conditions, but moderate lighting seems to be preferred. I run T5’s on my 20 gallon nano reef, so they aren’t quite as intense as a metal halide, but they are still pretty intense over the small aquarium. So I’m hoping with varying depths of live rock on which to place the coral, it will provide plenty of levels of lighting to experiment with and place the coral where it will do best.

            Another requirement is its feeding; this coral has the advantage of consuming algae within its own coral structure to help it obtain nutrients. This is great because, as long as the conditions allow, this coral can feed it self to a certain degree. It does however seem to require supplemental feedings, but will accept a wide variety of readily available food, making it easy to keep up this corals feeding requirements.

            The last requirement that I looked at for the Candy Cane Coral is the water current it requires too thrive. I found some contradictory information on this topic that leads me to believe this coral can survive most high and low flow areas. That being said I think there is definitely some room here to experiment with what flow the coral will flourish in, and what flow will merely sustain the coral. Most of the research leans toward the moderate to low flow rate, but there have been some instances in my exploration that suggest the coral does well under high flow areas as well. I run 2 power heads in my reef set up; together they create many areas of high to low flow rates, so I’m confident that I can find a great spot that meets this corals needs once I get it in the set up.

           
            The Candy Cane Coral seems, at least on paper, to be a great coral to start with. I plan on purchasing the coral soon, hopefully within the next week or so, and getting it into the Nano reef. My next blog will be accompanied by a video, and will look at the coral as it adapts to the aquarium. Over the period of a week or so, I will look at how the coral reacts to my reef set up as well as its response to different locations within the tank. Hopefully I will be able to validate my research, answer some of the questions I have about the best flow conditions for this coral, as well as come to my own conclusions and observations about the Candy Cane Coral.

           

            Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave a comment, suggestion, advice or just voice your support below.

Thanks,

Zero