Ideas for a low light marine aquarium

[BCOrchidGuy]

So where I'm at right now is, maybe instead of using all my rock etc and making a cichlid tank I'll make a low light tank.

I'm thinking a 24 inch Marine Glow fluorescent tube on my 54 Gall corner and I'll keep sponges, sun polyps, maybe sea pens, carnation corals and a few feather dusters. For fish I'm thinking a pair of Clarkii clowns or another pair of clowns along with a goby or two and a pistol shrimp. Some cleaner shrimp etc to round it all off.
Anyone have any other idea's on stuff I can keep in a set up like this mainly along the lines of corals etc? I figure I should see some interesting and nice coraline growth in there.

Doug

[muck]

xenia :razz:

[danny zubot]

Shrooms too! And you could add a red light over it for night viewing.

[Beverly]

Doug, if you could go for a 24" PC fixture, which would give you 55w, you'd probably be able to keep xenia and shrooms. With a 24" NO marine glo, I don't think you will see much growth with xenia or shrooms. JMO, though.

[danny zubot]

With my old 54 corner I had a dual 30 inch NO fixture. I used 1 10k and 1 Marine glow for a total of 40 watts. The only problem is that it only lit the front part of the tank, but I did keep shrooms in there.

[Willow]

there are lots of cool macro algaes you could grow.

[rusty]

You coud also keep Green Star poylps, I had some in a 30 gallon with power glow and marine glow NO fluorescents. They grew great.

[reefer_11]

carnation corals
Doug

If I remember correctly Waikiki Aquarium (Charles Delbeek) so far is the only place that has been able to keep these corals alive for an extended period of time and grow. They did this by constantly having the tank water changed directly from the ocean. (I tried looking for the article but can't find it at the moment).

These are NON-PHOTOSYNTHETIC and do NOT belong in our tanks.

Why try if you are going to guarantee them a slow death due to starvation?

If you do a search online you will find that there is not one expert that recommends keeping these corals. Including; Harker, Calfo, Borneman, Delbeek. They will all say pretty much the same thing. At this time we do not know what the needs of these corals are.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Reefer, yeah I know they are NON photosynthetic, that's why I was considering them for a LOW light set up. I had good luck with mine in a cave in my 90 gallon but any part of it that was exposed to direct light didn't fare well, I put in another rock to provide more shade and the carnation coral did very nicely as did my orange and blue sponges.

Thanks for the ideas everyone, lots of reading and thought to go.

Doug

[Troy F]

Hey Doug, how long did you manage to keep one alive?

I read the article mentioned above and I don't believe they were successful. They were keeping them in large cylindrical aquariums and experimented with different food sizes as well as different currents. One of the theories is that the current is more important than any one had thought. It's been a while since I read that so take what I've said with a grain of salt. I think it was in magazine. Or maybe a reefkeeper e-zine.

As for low light, there are a tonne of really cool fish that prefer lower light that I've always wanted but of course with a standard reef is not really possible. Good luck.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Troy, I had an odd kinda ugly manifold system I made that was a bit of PVC pipe that ran down the back corner in the tank, a T and two 45degree angles to direct water, the first T was at the bottom of the tank, about halfway down the PVC that ran down the back corner was another T that had a second T on it with a 45 again on each side of the T and then a capped off length of PVC that could be kept under the rocks. I had drilled holes in the PVC at different angles and different sizes to give me lots of water movement behind the pile of rocks. I had that on both sides of the aquarium I used a Rio 1700 to blow the water down through the PVC on each side of the tank. I fed everything to the tank, green water, mysis, Selco, flake, powdered spirulina etc etc. HOW I kept it alive is I guess a mystery, I just knew it didn't like light so I kept it out of light in a cave. I had a few caves and such through the tank as I really wanted sponges in the tank and knew with MH I wouldn't be able to have the sponge. The Carnation Coral was a spur of the moment purchase and I kept it for quite a while with out really knowing it wasn't an easy coral to keep. I managed to have my Goniopora grow substantially in the same tank and kept some hard to keep fish at the same time. Maybe I was just lucky, I suppose I was, it sure wasn't skill.

Doug