Tips

I am not an expert, the following tips just my own experience of reefkeeping.

Introduction

In my own experience, over 90% death of my coral/anemone are caused by unstable chemical environment (such as KH, salinity fluctuation) and lack of calcium (<350ppm). Especially the calcium is very important to most of the stony corals. Lack of food, water movement and light will not easy to cause death. Of course pollution may be also the main reason cause death, such as Ammonia and Nitrite pollution. A pH meter is very very important for coral/anemone keeping. Regular calibration for pH probe is also very very important (every month). pH meter with alarm function will be much better.

Coral for beginner

Leather Coral, Mushroom Coral and those corals which are less calcium demand are good choices for beginner. I will collect more species here for your reference later.
 

Minimum Requirement of Reefkeeping.

1. Make sure the new water is suitable of fish/reef keeping.
Make sure the water does not contains chlorine and heavy metal. It is better to prefilter the water with DI filter before mix with sea salt, RO/DI filter is recommended. And the salinity (S.G.) of the new salt water is between 1.022 to 1.024. Make sure your SG meter has a correct reading and keep the S.G. as stable as possible. Do not change it often.

2. Ammonia, Nitrite pollution (Must keeps at 0ppm).
A well-cycled tank does not has ammonia problem, you MUST wait until the tank is fully cycled before put any corals into the tank. To cycling your tank you need a proper BIO-filter, a wet/dry filter or live rock with one or two hard fishes. If you have good quality live rock, Bio-filter and Wet/Dry filters are not necessary. In my own opinion, I don't recommend to use and bio or mechanical filter in a Reef Tank. Full cycling time may takes around one month to completed. Nitrite may appear after cycle if you feed too much to your fishes or dead fishes has not been take away. If nitrite still appear after two months, your bio filter or live rock (quantity and water circulation) may have problem.

3. pH level (8.1 to 8.4).
Keep the pH fluctuation as small as possible. Because I found that my corals will become stress when pH fluctuation is more than +/- 0.3 (day/night). The pH level will reach at the highest point at evening and will drop to lowest point at early morning (Algae & corals consume CO2 at day time and release CO2 at night). You need to test the pH level daily by high range pH test kit. More convenience way is install an electronic pH meter to monitor the pH level. Calcium Reactor with CO2 system help to continually supply Calcium Bicarbonate to the system to maintains both Calcium and Carbonate level, as a result the pH should be more stable.

4. Calcium (>350ppm).
The calcium level of the water is important to those stony corals. But what caused the falling of Calcium? Stony Coral itself will use a lot of calcium to build up their skeleton, the calcium will falling gradually. And extra amount of KH buffer also caused falling of calcium since the Carbonate ion will combined with the Calcium ion to form insoluble Calcium Carbonate. Your stony corals may open widely but suddently not open again in one day and dying. It is danger when Calcium fall below 350ppm and problem may happened when it is less than 300ppm. Keep the calcium level at or above 400ppm by using Calcium Chloride and Kalkwasser. In my own opinion, a calcium reactor is necessary for keeping stony corals, since it can continuely supply calcium biocarbonate to the tank. I am now using Korallin Calcium Reactor C1501.

5. Temperature (24C to 26C).
The temperature of aquarium water may higher than room temperature since your electrical equipment will continually generating heat energy into the aquarium water especially MH lighting. If your room temperature is 32C in summer then the tank water may 36C!
You can add a bottle of ice or ice pad to the tank to cool down the water but it will last not long. Add a fan blowing to the water surface will help to cool down 2-3C. More convenience way is install a Chiller (Compressor Aquarium Cooler).  

6. Nitrate pollution (Keeps under 20ppm)
To controller Nitrate:-
1. You need sufficient amount of live rocks cycled together with your tank, it will takes time for anaerobic bacteria growing.
2. Throw away all bio/mechanical filters and add a good/strong protein skimmer
3. Less feeding
4. High intensity lighting is also important for benefit algae & corals grow to consume some portion of nitrate (Metal Halide lighting is recommend). Don't worry about unwant algae, you can use some algae eating fish like Tang and algae eating snail like Astrea Snail to controls unwant algae.

7. No copper medication can be dose
DO NOT ADD  MEDICATION WHICH CONTAINS COPPER TO THE REEF TANK, THAT WILL KILL ALL YOUR INVERTEBRATES!
If you need to control white spots (ICK), a UV sterilizer, cleaner shrimp, cleaner wasser and some reef safe medicine will help.

8. No coral eater animal
Don't put any coral eating fish such as butterfly, big angle fish.

The above requirement only can help you to keep your corals alive, any further improvement need additional equipment, method and additive.
 
 

Some suggestions for further improvement for reef keeping

9. Proper lighting
Too weak lighting will reduce growing of invertebrates and also destroy the bio-balance of the system, if you found your rocks are very clean without any algae, that may not in good condition, but how much light is enough for reef keeping ? Without complex calculation, you can imagine that your tank is placed under direct sun light. I think a Metal Halide lighting can easy to make this condition. I am using Two 150W 6500K MH lighting cooperate with two 55W Actinic PC. 9 hours for MH and 12 hours for Actinic PC.

10. Additional essential elements is need
Regular adding essential elements is important especially you have a protein skimmer. Essential elements will be used up by corals and fishes and also will be extracted out by protein skimmer. I am now using Korallin S-Plus and Korallin Amino Life.

11. Less feeding
To prevent system over load, less feeding for fishes and corals will help. Now I feed the fishes for twice a day with small amount each time.

12. Add enough live rock and live sand.
Live rock and live sand are natural filtering system. They can oxidize toxic ammonia, nitrite to nitrate by aerobic bacteria and reduce nitrate to N2O or N2 gas by anaerobic bacteria. It also can provide hidden spaces for fishes to reduce their stress.

13. Use bio-filter instead of mechanical filter
Advantage of bio-filter (wet/dry filter) is high water flowing rate, high oxidation potential and less maintenance need. Mechanical filter will easy to be blocked and need to clean every week.
Many aquarists even suggested that no bio-filter is needed if you have enough live rock and live sand, the advantage is less nitrate will be accumulated in the system, details you can found in Nathan's Mini Reef Aquarium Page

14. Use water filtered by RO/DI filter.
Beside Chloride, the tap water may consists of some unwanted elements, eg. PO4, NO3, Cu.... It may affect the health of the corals or promote unwanted algae grow. RO or DI filter can eliminate those chemical compound from the tap water.

15. Algae free
Algae need nutrition to grow, PO4, NO3.... There are three steps to make them disappeared from your tank.

15. Prevent and fight with ICK
It is a nightmare if ICK appeared in your reef tank since you cannot use copper to treat the fishes. The better way to prevents ICK is put the new fishes into a quarantine tank with small amount of CopperSafe for 3 days before put them into the main tank.
If the tank is already infected by ICK, you may have four choices.

  1. Let it be
  2. Take away all the fishes and treat them with copper in a quarantine tank. Let the tank without any fishes for one months to end up the ICK life cycle.
  3. Use some reef safe medicine, but side effect may still existing.
  4. Use UV sterilizer controls the ICK in water and use cleaner shrimp/cleaner wasser to control the ICK on the fish body.

Equipment I had before but don't think they are important

1. Ozonizer
You don't need it if you have proper lighting, proper water current and don't have abnormal polution. Actually Ozonizer can only has short term effect but cannot solve the these kind of problems in long term.

2. ORP meter
IMO, it is not too useful for home aquarium since you may see other symptom while the ORP fall down.

3. Denitrator
Difficult to adjust and not effective. Some saltwater plant work much better to remove nitrate.

Equipment I am using and I think they are important

1. MH lighting
Provide high intensive light for photosynthesis effect.

2. Calcium Reactor
Provide both Calcium and Carbonate ion to the tank makes KH and pH stable.

3. Powerful Protein Skimmer
Remove wastage before they are broken down into NO3 or PO4.