Ideal Coral Combinations for Small Aquariums

I've been tinkering with my tank I am setting up lately, a Neo Nano which is about a 2' x 2' square that is 1.5' high or so - around 34 gallons plus a decent size sump.

As I have water, sand and I will have rock within a week - I am starting to think about coral.

I am at a bit of a crossroads - deciding between soft corals and hard. I have had pretty good success with Bird's Nest and some Montipora, but Acros required a lot of attention in my last tank (20 long) - when I was on it, they grew, when I was out for a week - they receded. My best success was in my 30 long with leathers, hammers, brains, shrooms - that sort of thing.

I am thinking of trying to not to mix soft and hard as much in a small tank again to avoid chemical warfare and mixed lighting,current requirements.

I have a 150w 14k ushio halide HQI, dead center about 8 inches over the tank. I have crazy random flow. More on this later.

If you had my tank, what combinations of coral would you put in it?

 

considering your lighting/flow... if i had the tank i would do a stony tank with pipefish and seahorses. now that would be cool IMO

 

Whoa. That would be cool. Too much current for seahorses though.

To keep this clean, lets stay on the corals for now...

 

psh yeah what was i thinking haha they would go for one heck of a ride! Keeping with corals though, it would be cool to do something similar to Tatted's setup

 

you could do one half softies and one half stonys. why not have the best of both worlds. and just do hte easy stonys you know you can do. then move up as you get more courageous.

 

What about straight LPS? Fungia, duncans, favia, scolymia, chalices, acans, blastomussa, euphyllia, lobophyllia, maybe a trachyphyllia or symphyllia or cynarina, then you can throw some awesome zoos and maybe some dendros in there too. That is a good combination of great colors without the higher maintenance of SPS or the chemical warfare and some lack of color that you get with some softies. Plus you get some great movement from the euphyllia and duncans. You have some substrate corals, some encrusting corals, some branching corals to make the aquascape more unique.

If you want to get fancy you could get something crazy and new and nonphotosynthetic like a Heteropsammia cochlea or an Arcohelia redviva.

 

if I had that set up, that lighting and as stated the crazy random flow

those parameters suite many softies in addition to SPS
the real question here, is how much time do you have to invest in this set up

if time is restrictive , I would do a Zoanthid garden with a couple of feature corals
get as many different Zoanthid colours as I could and then highlight them with other high flow (and dont really care about lighting) toadstools, leathers etc

if I had plenty of time (well I always seem to dont I)
then with the set up you have , it would be SPS all the way, no room for softies, maybe a few Zoas on the lower levels , but the main focus would be the blues, purples, yellows, reds, etc of some great looking SPS frags

Steve

 

Hmmmm... The lighting and flow makes me think SPS might do better in the tank. and some LPS...

If I had that tank I would do a
50% SPS
25% LPS
25% Zoanthids/Softies.

SPS Some acros and monti caps...
LPS, open brain for the sand bed and duncans, maybe even a sun coral
And well, get some nice Zoanthids to give the lower portion of the tank some color pop!

Oh and throw a clam in there to boot! LOL

 

lps tank would be the coolest. Brain and hammer with 3 chromis and a mandarin/scooter or 2.

 

+1 on the clam. best thing i bought for my tank so far.