hard corals

i want to get some new corals ex; acouporia. what should i be testing for? is this one a good one to start with or should i try something else? what should i feed them and how often?

alk 12.3
cal 480-500
nitrates 5
nitrites 0
amonnia 0

 

Rob,
The Acropora corals are indeed a beautiful small polyp stony coral. It is generally recommended that you have lots of waterflow, excellent water parameters, (like yours) and good lighting to ensure the corals will thrive and show you their true colors. ;D
If you decide to go this route, I would like to recommend one of our sponsors. These are frags, so you can watch them grow.
http://www.azcoralco.com/Browse_Item_Details.asp/Item_ID/363/categ_id/14/parent_ids/0

Have a good one.
Jim

 

I realized that I didn't answer all of your questions. Some important things for the care of sps corals. There must be adequate lighting, they are light demanding corals, they get 99% of their food from their symbiotic algae Zooxanthellae. You need to maintain a good degree of alkalinity at least 3.5 to 5 meq/l. Adding trace elements may help but a good rule of thumb is don't add it unless you can test for it. They can also be fed a supplemental diet of plankton (general term) like this http://www.ipsf.com/coralheaven.html How much lighting do they need? Good question , very long answer... I would say that if you have metal halides as a light source you should be fine. Compact fluorescents put out a good light source and so do t5's. For this type of lighting I would put the corals towards the top of the tank to be sure there is enough light for photosynthesis.
Jim