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.
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| 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
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