New to coral

what type of coral can i grow with my tank as is?
155gph powerhead HOB overflow wet dry with 150w thermostated heater wet dry holds about 5 gallons on a fullday 20 pounds live rock 2 bulb t5ho 1 actinic 1 sun glo 1 homemade protein skimmer ( plastic bottle model ) 15lbs aragonite sand bed ( sept 2011 ) 20pounds coraline crusted , feather duster on some , verm snails , live rock , 1 maroon clown 1 dwarf bicolor angel 1 damsel 5 astrea 5 red legged 6 mexican turbo snails 1 deco crab

 

What size is your tank? I would start with a couple different kinds of coral. Angel's are only sometimes reef-safe, and they may pick on certain corals. I would try some cheap zoas and a cheap small hardy SPS piece (i.e. Birdsnest, green slimer, etc.). Don't spend too much money, just see what your tank can support and go from there. SPS IMO are easy. You just have to have good params, a lot of light, and a lot of flow. Put the SPS as high in the tank as possible (frag rack would be good). As far as flow, I have found that SPS do best with 50-80x flow. For example, if you have a 10 gallon tank, you would want 500-800 gph of flow that contributes to water movement within the display tank. You also want calcium above 400, mag should be 3.1x calcium, alk 8-11dKH, nitrate below 10 or 20 ppm, nitrite and ammonia 0 ppm, and 0 ppm phosphate. Softies and LPS can tolerate less. Good luck.

 

The fact you only have a dual bulb fixture means I wouldn't suggest any sps. You can keep something like birdsnest under that lighting BUT they will brown out! I have my birdsnests under a dual T5HO fixture and they lost their color, and they were sitting up HIGH in the tank. Upgraded to a 4 bulb fixture and they got their color back! They will grow and stay alive but will be ungly colors lol. With your lighting, personally I would stick with softies and LPS corals. Most of them are pretty hardy! Like mentioned above keep a CLOSE eye on that angel... they aren't always reef safe. I would start off with something like Zoanthids, they are very hardy and will do great under your fixture. An LPS like a trumpet coral is another great beginner, frogspawns and hammer corals are good ones too. Green star polyps are good, but I would keep these on their own little island rock away from the glass and main rock structure... they just grow waaayy too fast and can chose out and grow over other corals. As long as your parameters are in check ad everything is where it needs to be there is a lot you can choose from in the softies and lps corals