SPS Corals
Small Polyp Stony corals, or SPS as they are often referred to are the brightest most colorful corals that the hobbiest can acquire. Colors range from bright pink to deep blue. However, along with the beauty comes increased care levels. These live corals require pristine water conditions, high calcium levels and generally expensive bright metal halide lighting. It is recommended that these corals be left to advanced reef keeper with a few years experience.
SPS coral are among the most expensive to buy and the hardest to care for. These will require a ton of supplemental work, such as adding new equipment, dosing certain chemicals, and very high output lighting.
Lighting: The minimum here is about 4 watts of light per gallon depending on the depth of your aquarium, and the depth of your sps corals.
Common lighting used to grow SPS coral are the obvious metal halide, but high quality T-5 fixtures or retro kits work well also. The new LED lighting fixtures with various degrees of optics are also now becoming common place in this hobby, showing high growth rates in SPS specifically.
Equipment: SPS corals require constant availability of certain trace elements such as calcium and alkaline. This is because the actual coral has a calcium carbonate skeleton and needs supplemental introduction of these elements to keep a constant amounts in the water of the aquarium in order for the coral to grow. As far as equipment, many of the high end reefers that keep SPS have Kalk and Calcium reactors, which are pretty much set and forget ways to keep your needed supplement levels at the desired level. Aside from that, many people do a 2 part manual dosing of these elements, sometimes using medical grade dosing pumps to keep levels stable. This method requires a lot of fine tuning and monitoring.
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[...] Aquarium metal halide lighting is also the number one choice of lighting for hobbyists that keep Small Polyp Stony corals. This type of coral is the most sensitve and hardest to keep out of any that I have [...]
[...] SPS Corals (Small Polyp Stony) [...]