- Are soft corals good for beginners?
Absolutely, with- (book clattering)
With a few exceptions that I will point out in just a bit,
but ultimately there are a lot of reasons
that make them a great choice for beginners
that are just getting their feet wet in the reefing hobby,
so let's take a look at some of those reasons
that soft corals are such a great choice for beginners.
Also, I guess I probably should have said
get your hands wet.
I don't think anybody's putting their feet
in their reef tank, I hope.
First off, there are loads of different soft corals
that are readily available in the hobby,
and they come in all sorts of shapes, colors, sizes,
and growth forms from carpeting Zoanthids
to branching finger leathers.
many soft corals also add a lot of movement to the reef
and sway back and forth with minimal flow.
You can most definitely create a very attractive
and captivating reef tank using nothing but soft corals,
meaning you can keep your reef tank low-maintenance,
which is the second benefit to soft corals.
Because soft corals don't have calcium carbonate skeletons
like LPs and SPS corals, they don't consume calcium
and carbonate at nearly the same rate,
and that can often mean you won't need to dose calcium
or alkalinity supplements nearly as often
or sometimes at all
for many soft coral tanks, doing small 25% water changes
periodically is all it takes to keep major and minor
trace elements in the water within the ranges
that soft corals require.
Yes, you should absolutely still test your water
every so often to make sure calcium, alkalinity,
pH, phosphate, and nitrate are in order,
but it isn't critical to do it multiple times a week
like it can be with corals that have
calcium carbonate skeletons.
Which brings me to the third reason
that soft corals are great for beginners.
They are typically very hardy and much more resistant
to changes or swings in water chemistry.
This is particularly important for beginners
because new reefers tend to make mistakes.
There's a fair learning curve to keeping a reef aquarium
and there are bound to be all kinds
of water chemistry mishaps along the way.
While some corals like acropora and other SPS
are quite sensitive to changes in water chemistry
and can have really bad reactions very quickly
to those changes, soft corals tend to be much more forgiving
and even if they do close up and retract
when mistakes are made, they can easily bounce back
when the mistake is corrected,
where SPS or LPS corals might already be too far gone.
Another reason softies are an excellent option
for beginners is the fact that most softies can thrive
under less expensive and lower output light fixtures.
They don't typically require nearly as much flow,
meaning you can get by with fewer
and less expensive wave pumps.
Soft corals are also typically really good
at uptaking excess nutrients when they are thriving,
so you may not need a protein skimmer
or other equipment typically used on reef tanks
with LPS and SPS corals.
That means you can get started in the hobby
with a much smaller upfront cost
compared to those high-tech coral systems.
So you can buy small frags which are less costly
and they will grow into larger colonies
and fill the tank much quicker,
meaning you won't necessarily need to wait a year
or possibly years for your reef tank
to look like a full, lush coral reef.
It's actually pretty tough to find the negatives
of soft corals Ford beginners,
but there are a couple of softies
that beginners just plainly should avoid.
True Palythoas, which are typically large brownish polyps
that grow together in a mat similar to other Zoanthids,
have a nasty toxin that makes them
inedible to most predators.
The problem is, that toxin is also
quite dangerous for humans, and if it gets into
a cut on your hands or worse, if you were to try
to scrub them off of a rock under hot steamy water,
the toxin can be a painful and very dangerous experience.
There have been a number of news articles
over the years where a briefer who didn't realize
the dangers of Paly toxin were hospitalized
for mishandling them.
Another group of soft corals that should be avoided
by beginners are carnation corals,
also known as Dendronephthya,
and other non-photosynthetic corals
like gorgonians and sea fans.
Unlike the majority of softies that we see
in the roofing hobby, these corals are non-photosynthetic,
meaning they don't get their energy from light
and rather require specialized care with heavy feedings
of specific types of foods in order to thrive.
I've seen a few great non-photosynthetic reef tanks
over the years, but they're quite uncommon
because they're much more challenging
than your typical reef aquarium.
Knowing what corals are best to start with
and what to avoid is gonna make a world of difference
when starting your first reef tank,
along with exactly when you should start
introducing corals and how to introduce them safely.
There are actually 10 corals we recommend for beginners
to start with, and only six of them are soft corals.
The other four are LPS corals,
and you can check them all out in this video right here.
(upbeat music)