Fluval EVO 13.5 build

Timbo13 · Dec 30, 2020

Last post for the year. I'm pretty sure I have dinos, not cyano. It would explain a lot of things. It disappears at night and re-appers during daylight hours. The electric blue hermits wont touch it. It gets air bubbles in it and it's heavy. I can't siphon it out of the sand. I can't get a hold of Dr. Tim's waste away here in Japan but I found another product called Pristine by Seachem. It seems to be a similar type of thing, so I'll see if that helps at all. Kind of good news. My new reefer 170 sump and display arrived today. Cabinet won't arrive till Jan 4 though. I've got a lot of stuff on order for the new tank so I guess it doesn't really matter that I can't put it together yet.
Got some Aptasia x to get rid of the aptasia on my rock, it looks like it did the job.
Also I saw this anemone at my LFS. I've never seen one like it before and am thinking about putting it in my quarantine tank till the reefer is ready. I'm worried someone will get in there and buy it before I do. Could anyone help with identifying it and let me know if it eat my inverts or just grow to be a ridiculous 20 inches or something. Also is the yellow fish like a coral beauty? Would it go well in a reefer 170? Thank you in advance.
Happy New Year's Reefers!!

namfuak · Dec 31, 2020

Your tank is looking great! I started my evo within a couple days of yours and looking forward to your future updates.

Timbo13 · Dec 31, 2020

namfuak said:
Your tank is looking great! I started my evo within a couple days of yours and looking forward to your future updates.

I'm loving the tank. I've just a bad run with hitchickers (I'm pretty sure the dinos came in on some rock that was attached to some GSP I bought). I'm going to start following your build

Timbo13 · Dec 31, 2020

Some photos to close out the year.

namfuak · Dec 31, 2020

Timbo13 said:
I'm loving the tank. I've just a bad run with hitchickers (I'm pretty sure the dinos came in on some rock that was attached to some GSP I bought). I'm going to start following your build

I hear you with the hitchhikers. It looks like I missed some bryopsis on a frag I had received at some point and had it pop up in a few places. Not sure if I'll ever get rid of it

Timbo13 · Feb 14, 2021

Not much has changed recently. Parameters have been good besides the occasional overfeeding. Added a YWG to the Evo, then a Randall's shrimp a few days later. They paired up within a couple days. That was about a month ago now. Have been busy with work/life etc so haven't updated my post for a while. Will start my build thread for the reefer I bought soonish. Teaser photo below.

Timbo13 · Feb 22, 2021

I was doing my weekly water change when I saw this. A stomatella snail releasing eggs into the water. I'm pretty sure I only have 1 in the tank. So I'm wondering if these eggs will result in little snails or is the snail just shooting blanks. For some reason I can't upload the video but here's some screen shots of the video

Timbo13 · Mar 28, 2021

I've done a bit more upgrading to the tank. I added a Red Sea mesh cover and upgraded the lighting to an AI Prime with a diffuser. The weather here is warming up so I was planning on ditching the stock lighting/cover at some point soon. Really happy with the way the tank looks now. Added 2 new coral to the tank. A torch coral (cut from the torch I put into my other tank/ I will update that post sometime soon) and some green gonoporia. Both corals are doing well. I've moved the 2 clowns over to the other tank as well. Hopefully they are fine because a few days ago I noticed a white flake on the firefish I added to the tank. I just assumed it was a scratch because its behaviour was normal, eating swimming etc. Then the flake disappeared and re-apperared. Having a closer look at the fish I noticed some other white spots on it. (no photos unfortunatelly) This morning it didn't leave it's cave, it's breathing heavily just lying on the sand bed. I caught it and gave it a freshwater dip. I put it back into the tank and it's gone into hiding again. There's a video of the fish in the dip below. I think it's too late to save it. Also, I can't get my hands on Prazipro in Japan. I'm assuming its flukes BTW but it's possible its something else. I just hope the clowns are ok. I had them in the tank with the firefish for about a week, I didn't notice anything wrong with it till a few days after I moved the clowns.
If the firefish doesn't make it. Does anyone know how long I need to leave the tank fish-less for? I've read 2-3 months. If it is 2-3 months, would I be able to just focus on adding coral for that time period?

Timbo13 · Dec 16, 2021

It's been a while since I updated this post. For about 2.5 months earlier in the year I had to let the tank run fallow. Once I was sure the tank would be right to get more livestock, I picked myself up a Banggai Cardinal. I also added a Royal Gramma last week.
In terms of coral, I thought I'd try and put some acro in there. I'm not sure what they are (they were on the cheap side), but they're going ok. I still haven't stuck them in place, just giving them some time. Also moved the powerhead to the other side of the tank for more random flow. Added some disc corals and an orange zoa but the zoas haven't really opened much.
I think I finally worked out my cyano problem too. I was doing 15% water changes every week, tried redaway, changing the floss everyday.... nothing worked. Just the other day I picked up a new gravel syphon and realized the one I was using sucked. ( in the bad way!)
The new one pulled out heaps of detritus. I think it's finally going to go away.
New pics are below, it looks a little blue though.

Timbo13 · Mar 4, 2022

Small update. I cut out some of the top of the inTank chamber 1 basket. I didn't like the way it raised the water level so high in the display. There's some photos of what I did and the results below. It's still a bit higher than what I'd like though. Also been trying to grow out some acans and zoas in anticipation of getting a bigger tank. Stock list is a royal gramma and a Banggai Cardinal. I added some acro about 3 months and it's been slowly encrusting. I might start to dose kalk and see if that helps. Alkalinity is usually around 6.6 before a water change and gets back to 6.9 after a water change. So a drop of 0.3 throughout the week. I do weekly 15% waterchanges. The first few pictures are the adjustments to the inTank basket, the last few are some tank shots. The final pic is the overflow flow grill showing the water level on entry to the back chamber. Oh, my smart light ATO sensor died. It looks like somehow water got into it and it stopped topping off.