Reef Discussion

[rosechaser]

As a newbie, I'm not even sure if this is the right section to post this, anyway here now so should continue.

I would love a Birds Nest and had a couple of questions.

• Are they hard for a newbie
• Are they readily available,
• Expensive?
• I wanted to put one down on a small bommie with room to grow quite large...with the right light is this viable
• How top heavy do they become, I mean how big a piece of rock would one need to suppoert te birds nest without tipping over

I love the less is more look and woul dlove to have a large Birds nest...is 30 cm to 40 cm hard to achieve?

 

[n0rk]

• For a newbie, I'd cut your teeth with other corals first. Once you can maintain water quality they're fairly easy (and particularly so for an SPS) and exhibit good growth rates under a wide range of conditions, but they don't like sudden change or subpar starting conditions.
• Sometimes readily available - it depends where you look. Your best bet would be getting an aquacultured one, Oceanarium has quite a few nice varieties that've been cut on captive systems for some time.
• They can be... they're one of the more expensive varieties of coral as there was a relative shortage about 18 months back which drove the price up and never came back down.
• They grow quite prolifically. It's achievable, but I'd wait for a while to try it.
• In the types of flow they need, you would need a quite secure rock. They catch flow very well, and as such act like a big windsock.

It's probably certainly one of the easiest SPS to achieve such with (the proper easiest would be Pocillopora by all accounts), but not the easiest coral around to do it with by any account.

 

[rosechaser]

Thanks for that...for now at least I would like to get the aquascaping right so I don't have to redo anything later and bugger up the "environment"

Have one large piece of suitable LR and will place that for the future.