Easy Corals for Beginners

New to reef keeping? These are the corals we suggest first: soft corals, mushrooms and zoanthids. They handle the small swings in temperature, salinity and nutrients that every young tank goes through, they grow under moderate light, and most of them need no special feeding.

Why these corals are easy

Soft corals such as leathers, kenya trees and green star polyps have no hard skeleton to build, so they don’t need the calcium and alkalinity dosing that stony corals do. Mushrooms grow in low light and low flow. Zoanthids spread across rock in bright colours and take most conditions in stride.

Before you add your first coral

Let a new tank run for a month or two first, with stable salinity and no ammonia or nitrite. Acclimate each coral slowly, place it low in the tank, and move it up only if it looks pale. When you’re ready for more, try our LPS corals, or add a cleanup crew to keep algae down.