Beginner soft corals?
 

I'm just starting out in this and only have one fairly small Kenya tree coral that I adore. I would love to know some other beginner friendly more hardy soft corals that I can get :) I would love to get some pulsing Xenia as soon as my local(ish) Petco gets some in, but those are the only 2 I'm aware of that are hardy and good for beginners.

I would suggest looking into Green Star polyps (GSP) or Anthelia. Just beware that Xenia, GSP, and Anthelia all spread and can take over your rock quickly.

Certain types of mushroom, green star polyps, yellow polyps, button polyps, kenya tree, xenia, and most leathers would all be good.

Nepthea, finger coral toadstool. Good luck.

The only photosynthetic soft coral that I can think of to steer you away from is the yellow fiji leather. Other than that they are all hardy.

I would recommend leather corals, ricordea mushrooms, and zoas. Although xenias and GSP (green star polyps) are very hardy, once established they would grow like weeds and will take over your live rock and other corals. If you have a separate rock away from other corals and live rock, you may keep xenias or GSP on their own separate rock they will look very beautiful.

Great thank u!! Would anyone suggest buying from people on Craigslist? I only have a Petco like 30 mins away and it's pretty expensive and u can always find great deals of people selling frags on Craigslist. Any reason not to take advantage of that?

I like buying off craigslist. It comes the same risks of any other purchase from a stranger online, but I’ve generally had good experiences buying from other hobbyists.


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Beginner soft corals?
 

I like buying off craigslist. It comes with the same risks of any other purchase from a stranger online, but I’ve generally had good experiences buying from other hobbyists.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Honestly, I think most corals are beginner friendly. What does that even mean anyway? If your tank parameters aren't right even a Mushroom can do poorly. If your phosphates and nitrate are low you can start off with pretty much anything that doesn't require a lot of tweaking.If your tank is stable it doesn't matter what coral you get as long as you keep feeding it. Get some hammers, frogspawn, mushrooms, leathers, bubble tip anemones etc. The LFS I worked for refers to himself as a pro since he has been in business for 30 years yet his tanks have 160ppm nitrate and skyrocketing phosphates. Everything except SPS survives in his tanks. He doesn't feed his tanks and rarely does water changes. The alk in one of his tanks was below 6 and the brain corals were doing ok. Honestly, stability is king. Even if your parameters are **** as long as it is stable most corals will do fine.

What's the best Hardy corals that clowns may host in?

My clowns took over my torch coral.

Fiji leather
 

Ah oh! What is wrong with them? We have one we love. Are they bad in some way? He seems really happy.

All I can say is WOW..... Thanks for enlightening us with your experience. Also I guess all my tanks should crash cuz I don't feed any of them.

gsp, shrooms, toadstools, zoas, xenias, kenya tree softies are what you want to go for

Which of those corals do you think would survive the best without the expensive, hi-tech lighting? Any?

I had my clown fish pair host in a huge patch of green star polyps. Oddly enough they seemed to like that better than my anemone...

Leather corals worked well as a starter for me. I also had a small (1 inch pineapple tree) and that thing grew like a weed and propagated all over the place. After a year it was about 8 inches tall and wide. Moved around the rock a little too which was interesting.

Thanks for all the advice, even though I'm not OP!