Fluval Evo 13.5 Desk Ornament

[Lucrio]

As stated in my welcome post, I'm not new to aquariums but am relatively new to reefing. I currently have a 2.5 gallon reef jar on my desk that I'm going to replace with a fluval Evo 13.5g.

I wouldn't say the jar has been a failure but I would do a number of things differently starting over and I hope to address most of those with the Evo.

A few quick videos of the reef jar in its prime and one of my freshwater tank can be found on my TikTok acct here (tiktok.com/@bumblejerk). If linking to another site or tiktok specifically is frowned upon I can post some shots separately but this is the easiest way since they already exist and I can I just link them. Future updates will be photos posted to this thread.

This is my current pile of boxes. Still waiting on some stuff. You can see my corn snake's vivarium in the background.

 

[Lucrio]

Current supply list:

-The Evo itself
-Fluval mini skimmer designed for this tank
-Fluval 50w heater
-both intank filter chamber replacements
-Orbit 18" IC LOOP PRO Dual
-ACKE 12w grow light for second chamber refugium
-Aqamai KPS wave maker
Added later:
-cobalt neotherm 75w heater
-black zipties and outdoor heavy duty Velcro strips

Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting but can edit in later. Not likely to use the skimmer but it wasn't expensive so figured I'd try it out. It's going to be sitting next to me on a desk where I game and sometimes need to be heard on a mic so loud equipment will be kept to a minimum. Similarly trying to keep the lights under the hood for less blindness and hopefully less need for an ATO but will address that later if needed. I pulled most of this list from a couple threads here and one build journal I found on the web, will try to link those later for reference.

 

[Lucrio]

Build inspirations:

Lighting

Refugium

General build/gear suggestions

 

[Lucrio]

Problems with the jar and how I hope to address them with the Evo:

Dipping/quarantine
I was a fool! I don't have much in the way of local aquarium corals (two LFS that sell reef stuff but I was unimpressed by their selection/prices/both) so I had mine shipped and was worried about killing them, and, foolishly, thought, "they look clean, I'm sure it will be fine." I have featherdusters, spirorbid worms, roughly 20 billion mysid shrimp, and vermetid snails in the jar as a result. I managed to avoid aiptasia (I think there was one tiny baby aiptasia that showed up on my first hermit crab shell from the LFS but I managed to entomb it in superglue right away).

Solution: don't be an idiot, also maybe use the jar as quarantine once everything is set up in the evo

Cleanability/Tank Design
Since I was in a cramped jar I tried to make my tiny hardscape rock as interesting as possible, and I think I succeeded, but unfortunately it was very cramped in there and hard to get around the rock to gravel vac anything. Also there was a sweet cave underneath that I could never access for cleaning without taking the whole jar apart. I thought changing the entire water column every week would mitigate this but I was wrong, possibly because of sand, which--

Solution: Leave space, maybe don't make the entire bottom surface a cave

Sand
I chose caribsea AA special grade, because, come on, special grade, that's the best one, right? But it was so big my nassarius snails couldn't dig in it and combined with the above section, it's pretty gross. The snails may have also been harassed to death by the pom pom crab, who is a bit of a jerk, which--

Solution: I have a bag of oolite sand for this build but am afraid I may need another bag

Jerks
I don't think there's any way to completely solve this since your individual may be wildly different than the species description, but my pom pom crab is a real butthead (I don't know how we feel about swearing here, lol). I also have an emerald crab I bought to help us with bubble algae (again because of the way I set up the jar it was impossible to manually remove much of it), and he completely devoured one of my zoas, but has left the others alone so far.

Solution: I intend to keep my sexy shrimp but will probably re-home the emerald crab and I'm torn on the pom pom.

Glass
Lastly having ovoid shaped glass is really difficult to keep clean with available micro mag scrubbers, and I'm looking forward to being able to use the nano flipper float

Solution: upgrade out of the jar, done!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Best of luck on the tank!

 

[Lucrio]

tank placed

jar relocated

spent all evening making saltwater (I mix in 2.5 gallon jugs, so max 5g at a time)

bought a small piece of live rock from the LFS today both for cycling and because I was not able to get coralline algae going in my jar despite purchasing coralline in a bottle. My new stop-being-an-idiot-and-dip-your-stuff policy saved me from a fireworm, I believe.

left and right views. Obviously gotta even out sand (and still maybe need a little more), clean the glass, probably scrape the honeycomb pattern off the display section, but, water in!

Gonna let it run a day or two and then test out the skimmer for noise.

Stay tuned.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Good luck with that skimmer... I could never get any consistent results out of it. It may work for you, but if it doesn’t just think of it as a fancy airstone and don't get upset.
Also, keeping the lid and doing the Orbit mod you most likely will have heat issues. The light that comes with the Fluval, it is limited, IC orbits are a step up, but still limited. Have you considered a AI prime? Also you can get an ATO with a float switch like the Reefkeepers less expensive one.

 

[Lucrio]

Good luck with that skimmer... I could never get any consistent results out of it. It may work for you, but if it doesn’t just think of it as a fancy airstone and don't get upset.
Also, keeping the lid and doing the Orbit mod you most likely will have heat issues. The light that comes with the Fluval, it is limited, IC orbits are a step up, but still limited. Have you considered a AI prime? Also you can get an ATO with a float switch like the Reefkeepers less expensive one.

I straight up expect to not keep the skimmer but I thought it was worth the money to try it out. Fluval makes some...questionable design decisions, so I won't be surprised at all if it goes in the trash 10 minutes after I turn it on.

I'm not completely opposed to mounting a light over a mesh lid but I'd like to avoid it if I can for the evap, the noise, and the expense. IC orbits were $200, AI prime is $250 plus the mount plus an ATO (and somewhere to keep the reservoir under my desk) plus a lid (and I know myself, and I'd buy a $280 toplids lid because I suck) and then I have to deal with light spillover onto everything I do on the desk and the fan noise from the light.

But yeah if it comes to that, I'll do something else besides the lidded orbits. Appreciate your advice, will keep it in my back pocket.

 

[Lucrio]

Minor update today (no photos)

Fluval 50w heater that amazon suggested (my own fault for listening) doesn't fit in the sump in the chamber that's available, lol. Picked up a cobalt neo-therm like I should have done from the beginning, which is a good 4 inches shorter.

Skimmer is done and gone, meh, who cares. It wasn't especially loud but it was picked up by my desktop mic and I wasn't wild about having to punch a hole in the lid to use it in case I changed my mind later and couldn't close the lid back up.

Tank overheating from lights is a real possibility as tank was 82° last night with the stock (!) light on and heater set to 77ish. I think the heaters themselves have no thermostat and are just programmed to be on/off for certain durations depending on temp setting so hopefully a second inkbird will correct this. I had hoped to just use the one off my jar but didn't consider that I'd be unable to scavenge it while I still had critters in there.

So, new heater and new inkbird, about $80. Skimmer discarded, about $50 spent unnecessarily but not mad about it.

For anyone following, if I do, in fact, have to take the lid off for overheating issues I would have been way better off starting with the Innovative Marine Novo Fusion Pro 2 14g. Half a gallon more volume and an extra $130 but I spent about that much fixing Fluval's dumb filtration issues with the intank baskets and it has a lot more useful features. I'd still prefer this tank if I can keep it lidded, but we'll see.

Edit:
Ok, I lied, one photo for the sake of cleared up water. Do you think I need more sand?

Pictured are the piece of live rock and a coral frag that had been struggling in the jar. It's nearly dead and it wasn't going to get better in there so I threw it in here as a last ditch effort.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Well... If you like the peninsula style yes. I m a cube guy so the 15g for $99 is a great deal. I would already have one if I didn’t already have a Fiji cube 10. I only gain 1 inch of space all around. But actually if you have room on your desk the 20 peninsula is really nice.

 

[Fishy888]

Minor update today (no photos)

Fluval 50w heater that amazon suggested (my own fault for listening) doesn't fit in the sump in the chamber that's available, lol. Picked up a cobalt neo-therm like I should have done from the beginning, which is a good 4 inches shorter.

Skimmer is done and gone, meh, who cares. It wasn't especially loud but it was picked up by my desktop mic and I wasn't wild about having to punch a hole in the lid to use it in case I changed my mind later and couldn't close the lid back up.

Tank overheating from lights is a real possibility as tank was 82° last night with the stock (!) light on and heater set to 77ish. I think the heaters themselves have no thermostat and are just programmed to be on/off for certain durations depending on temp setting so hopefully a second inkbird will correct this. I had hoped to just use the one off my jar but didn't consider that I'd be unable to scavenge it while I still had critters in there.

So, new heater and new inkbird, about $80. Skimmer discarded, about $50 spent unnecessarily but not mad about it.

For anyone following, if I do, in fact, have to take the lid off for overheating issues I would have been way better off starting with the Innovative Marine Novo Fusion Pro 2 14g. Half a gallon more volume and an extra $130 but I spent about that much fixing Fluval's dumb filtration issues with the intank baskets and it has a lot more useful features. I'd still prefer this tank if I can keep it lidded, but we'll see.

Edit:
Ok, I lied, one photo for the sake of cleared up water. Do you think I need more sand?

Pictured are the piece of live rock and a coral frag that had been struggling in the jar. It's nearly dead and it wasn't going to get better in there so I threw it in here as a last ditch effort.

The coral frag, is it green star polyps?

 

[Lucrio]

The coral frag, is it green star polyps?

It is not. It's a rainbow monti from Tidal Gardens. I didn't expect it to grow well in the jar but I had seen other people do SPS in jars (still not sure how, in retrospect) and I wanted to try it out. It did ok for a little while and then started to bleach. It's still got a few living polyps, so, fingers crossed but no expectations.

Edit: For the record I like GSP but I don't want to spend every waking second pulling it out of my tank so I'll probably never get any.

 

[Lucrio]

Still waiting for the inkbird but with the heater turned down, no overheating with all three LED strips going. Foam has died down from live sand, wave maker in. Threw a rhodactis mushroom in that I had duplicates of in the jar (bought a frag of 2, one split later on). Still early days but everything going well so far.

having a hard time with coral photography in this tank so far, though. Have one of those clip on coral lens kits with a 15k filter, a 20k filter, a macro and wide angle lens attachment. None of it helps except the 15k filter and phone camera software sometimes just decides it can't see any of the fluorescence even though it saw it ten seconds ago and you changed nothing :/

 

[Lucrio]

Not a ton to relay this week, but a few things:

Montipora frag is recovering, which is great. I dipped it before I brought it over and then did a peroxide dip a day or two later when I saw some algae beginning to grow with the new lighting. Not a ton of color yet but increased number of visible polyps. Will get a photo soon to show progress.

Speaking of photos, I mentioned I was having trouble taking photos. Not sure if this was the new lighting or a recent software update to my phone (they made a bunch of little stuff worse and I wouldn't be surprised if the camera software was one of them). Downloaded a few different apps and ProShot has given me the most direct control over ISO and white balance and allowed me to get semi-decent shots again, which is nice.

There is a little temperature variance with the lid/lights/inkbird, I guess if the temp is at 78 when the lights come on it will creep up to about 79.5 by the end of the day cycle even though the heat is off. Don't think this enough to be a problem long term but will keep an eye on it.

I *am* a little concerned about the heavy duty Velcro solution for mounting though. Gonna look into some black ziptie support.

Was irritated to see they released the AI blade lights like 3 days after I purchased the orbit lights, lol. Still sort of thinking about ordering one to see how it fits in the stock light slot.

Evap is not as low as I hoped, so I may end up with an ATO anyway. If I'm gonna be saddled with one I may not need the lid, and then the lights situation may change, it's a mess. The fluval lid kinda sucks once you have 6 or 7 cords to route through it and for some reason the back lid overlaps the front lid so you can't just lift the front half if you need to scoot something.

The biggest development though, is that since I'm basically disassembling the jar anyway I got over my fear of crushing a crab or killing a coral by pulling out all the rockwork, so I pulled it out (carefully) and was able to vacuum some of the sand for the first time in a year and holy crap

I mistakenly believed the 95% water changes would keep me safe from excess waste buildup but clearly I was wrong (and this likely explains the current state of my jar). Lesson learned.

Edit: that's not the rock from the jar inside the bucket, it's just a spare piece of dry rock I hadn't thrown away or boxed up yet

Edit 2: updated monti photo. Probably hard to tell because the quality on the last one was so bad but probably tripled visible polyps on the top section. Good stuff. Sorry I kept you in such gross water with not enough light, little guy.

 

[Lucrio]

Came downstairs to find one of the velcro'd orbit strips sagging enough to touch the water and had to fix that ASAP.

Fortunately had some black zipties lying around from previous attempts at cable management. Drilled some 7/64 holes and chained zipties together and cinched them up.

With the amount of modding I've had to do so far, I still think this is the correct tank for this specific application but I would not recommend it to anyone else.

 

[Annelise15]

Not a ton to relay this week, but a few things:

Montipora frag is recovering, which is great. I dipped it before I brought it over and then did a peroxide dip a day or two later when I saw some algae beginning to grow with the new lighting. Not a ton of color yet but increased number of visible polyps. Will get a photo soon to show progress.

Speaking of photos, I mentioned I was having trouble taking photos. Not sure if this was the new lighting or a recent software update to my phone (they made a bunch of little stuff worse and I wouldn't be surprised if the camera software was one of them). Downloaded a few different apps and ProShot has given me the most direct control over ISO and white balance and allowed me to get semi-decent shots again, which is nice.

There is a little temperature variance with the lid/lights/inkbird, I guess if the temp is at 78 when the lights come on it will creep up to about 79.5 by the end of the day cycle even though the heat is off. Don't think this enough to be a problem long term but will keep an eye on it.

I *am* a little concerned about the heavy duty Velcro solution for mounting though. Gonna look into some black ziptie support.

Was irritated to see they released the AI blade lights like 3 days after I purchased the orbit lights, lol. Still sort of thinking about ordering one to see how it fits in the stock light slot.

Evap is not as low as I hoped, so I may end up with an ATO anyway. If I'm gonna be saddled with one I may not need the lid, and then the lights situation may change, it's a mess. The fluval lid kinda sucks once you have 6 or 7 cords to route through it and for some reason the back lid overlaps the front lid so you can't just lift the front half if you need to scoot something.

The biggest development though, is that since I'm basically disassembling the jar anyway I got over my fear of crushing a crab or killing a coral by pulling out all the rockwork, so I pulled it out (carefully) and was able to vacuum some of the sand for the first time in a year and holy crap

I mistakenly believed the 95% water changes would keep me safe from excess waste buildup but clearly I was wrong (and this likely explains the current state of my jar). Lesson learned.

Edit: that's not the rock from the jar inside the bucket, it's just a spare piece of dry rock I hadn't thrown away or boxed up yet

Edit 2: updated monti photo. Probably hard to tell because the quality on the last one was so bad but probably tripled visible polyps on the top section. Good stuff. Sorry I kept you in such gross water with not enough light, little guy.

Go go montipora!

 

[Lucrio]

Go go montipora!

This is my wife. She's jazzed about the monti recovery.

Moved all the mushrooms and the zoas I intend to keep over tonight. One mushroom dropped its rock anchor so it's in the cup of shame with some special grade sand until it decides to grab something again. Everything else glued down. Zoas I wanted to keep are in rough shape, of course the less pretty ones are hardy af.

Enjoy some photos. Getting better at the photography, I think.

 

[orange]

bump

How's the new tank going?

 

[olonmv]

It is not. It's a rainbow monti from Tidal Gardens. I didn't expect it to grow well in the jar but I had seen other people do SPS in jars (still not sure how, in retrospect) and I wanted to try it out. It did ok for a little while and then started to bleach. It's still got a few living polyps, so, fingers crossed but no expectations.

Edit: For the record I like GSP but I don't want to spend every waking second pulling it out of my tank so I'll probably never get any.

I stuck my frag of GSP to the back wall center bottom of tank and it encrusts up the wall and looks beautiful (IMO).

 

[Lucrio]

I stuck my frag of GSP to the back wall center bottom of tank and it encrusts up the wall and looks beautiful (IMO).

Will do an update later tonight.

Re: the gsp, does it not grow into your intake/powerheads/whatever?