Adding coral to the tank

Is there a rule of thumb on how much coral to add to a tank at one time or can you add as much as you have room for?

When you add coral should you wait until you add more...if so how long?

Just curious so I dont go too nuts adding stuff to my tank!

 

You can pretty much go nuts.. Just take leave some space between the corals to prevent fighting.. thats about it..

 

Oh, and you will need to closely monitor calcium and alk, but that should be a given if you are considering coral..

 

I agree with Bama ... just make sure you leave enough room for them to grow... otherwise they might harm each other.

 

This is a good query. I don't think it has been posed, as far as I know. My response is; I think it would depend really on your Alk, PH (stability), Magnesium and Calcium levels. If you were to load the tank with cal and mag consuming corals, you could cause a crash of elements relatively fast if not monitoring and dosing accordingly. I would say the best advice is always to go slowly, now in the case of coral you can speed things up by adding a substantial amount of frags as they are quite small but one must remember to to take into consideration the rock some coral are attached to. I suppose a mini-cycle may occur and then the size of the tank has to be taken into account as a larger tank volume may be able to handle any minute cycle from the rock. If not planning on dipping all coral added, "bad" hitch-hikers and perhaps undesirable algae spores may also pose a problem.