Trevor -
I have added alot of corals to my tanks in a relatively short period of time with decent results for years now. Although I still generally hold off on SPS for at least the first few months...
The key to a good setup (IMO) is good planning and budgeting BEFORE you setup your tanks, so you have a setup capable of handling the full tank bioload right from the start:
- Sufficient lighting from Day One
- As good as skimmer as you can get for the system size (IMO very important long term)
- An overabundance of flow (also very important)
- A way to keep your water parameters as stable as possible (ATO to keep SG constant, heater / controller to keep temp constant, timers on lights to keep photoperiod constant, attention to checking things like Alk & Ca and dosing frequently, etc)
- running carbon (and PO4 remover possibly) right from Day One
What I see alot of people do when they start off a new tank, that I think is counterproductive, are the following:
- Too many fish, not enough corals in the "fish to coral ratio"
- Too many soft corals at first / trying to make the tank look 'full' as quickly and cheaply as possible, instead of thinking about what you really want in the tank long - term... Plus, softies throw alot more chemicals into the water than hard corals and you need to deal with those toxins
- Fish choices that are not well thought out for the long term; i.e. throwing in a half dozen damsels just because they are 'cheap and tough' and then trying to figure out how to get rid of them later, when they start bullying to death anything else you try to put in the tank
- Saying "I'll get a better skimmer / better lighting / a carbon reactor / etc later, when the tank is more full of stuff - it doesn't need it right now"... then never doing it
My goal when I set up most tanks is to try and replicate the look of an actual reef (well, at least somewhat)...
If you have ever seen video taken from a reef dive, generally what you see is alot of open sand space, with relatively little visible 'life' other than a few large fish prowling around - dotted with 'islands / oasis' of coral outcroppings - some huge, many quite small - that are just packed with corals and small / juvenile fishes, inverts, etc. And these fish spend almost their whole day just zooming around, in and out of the corals and rocks, rarely venturing into the open waters.
So, I try to replicate that whole 'oasis' thing in my tanks.
Alot of rockwork, lots of nooks and crannies, corals covering almost the whole thing, properly sized fishes that can dart around in and out of the reef 'island', etc. IMO most tanks I see have far too little rockwork; mainly due to cost of the rock and the belief that fish need a ton of open swimming space. Tangs especially get misjudged (I know, here comes the "Tang Police"
)... In the wild,
adult tangs are open-water swimmers and need alot of space; most juvi Tangs however stay within the reefwork and do not venture into the open water areas and therefore are better suited in a secure "reef" enviroment then a tank that is mostly open sandbed.
Alot of flow; because A) I believe that there is almost never a such thing as 'too much flow' and B) with all that rockwork you need strong currents to move oxygenated water in and out of the whole 'island' and not have stagnant spots. As long as you are not tearing your more delicate corals (like Bubble Corals, for example) apart you should try for as much water movement as possible
Remember - as Mark says
- fish
pollute the water and corals
filter it... you should try for way more corals (like 10X more) than fish in a true 'reef' setup. The best looking tanks I have ever seen have like 1 fish for every 7 - 10 gallons of water volume, but literally dozens (sometimes even hundreds) of corals. One of the few exceptions I have seen would be Brad Syphus' (
tileman) fabulous 225g setup, where he has upped the 'fish' part of the ratio considerably - but he also has a
ton of coral in there as well. And Brad has a very well thought out system equipment - wise; a tremendous skimmer, great lighting, and tons and tons of water flow...
Edited by BobC63 - September 12 2011 at 9:01am
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Not only does sunlight provide an enormous amount of powerful illumination for coral and algae, the UV light energy cleans the water of some nasty bugs. 
The pollution is best eaten by lots of algae. 
