New Reefer, New to Me Fluval Evo

3sgterror

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So I have been sitting back researching and contemplating building a reef tank for the past year. One thing my wife will say is that when I commit to something I really commit!

So about a year ago I went out and bought a Red Sea Max e-260. Other projects around the house sideline the tank for the time being, although I have everything purchased and waiting to go. Just need to put some final touches on the room where the e260 will sit, then I can fill it with water and get it started.

In the meantime, I felt like I was missing out. As I mentioned, I had been researching for over a year now and the e260 has been sitting in my living room just waiting to be filled. So I went out and bought a Fluval Evo to hold me over.

This starts my Fluval Evo Build thread.

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3sgterror

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First thing that I wanted to modify on this tank was the honeycomb pattern around the top of the tank. A couple swipes with a razor blade and the pattern came right off. Although it was easy to take off, there was fine black flakes everywhere. Even though I just got finished cleaning the tank, I had to do it all over again.

After all that was all said and done, I feel like the tank looks much nicer with cleaner lines.

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3sgterror

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Next up on the modification agenda was to mimic the back AIO housing of my e260. That tank has black vinyl covering the rear sump area, so I decided to do the same on the Evo.

After some quick work with the vinyl, I have both side pieces covered and matching the e260.

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3sgterror

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Next upgrade was to print a plug for the chamber 2 hole in the false wall. I went red to match the theme of the larger tank, but I think I might change this out for purple.
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First time creating an aqua scape, kept it nice and simple. This rock came with the red sea tank when I bought it, so I had it sit out in the sun for a few months, let everything die off and then rinsed with some RODI.
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Content with the layout, I added some sand in. I think this is special grade, but I could be wrong.
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Now the tank is sitting in its resting place, and I topped it off with RODI and mixed in my salt. My tests were a few hours after mixing in my salt. And now my watch begins.
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3sgterror

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After looking through some other Fluval Evo posts and the short comings of this tank, I decided to upgrade the filtration system.

On the way is an Eheim Compact 1000. I also printed a random flow generator and a chamber one media basket that I found on Thingiverse.

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Installed, it fits like a glove. I have filter floss and other filtration media waiting until my cycle is complete.

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I'm still up in the air on if I want to install just the 1 random flow generator, or if I want a "Y" setup like stock, so that I can run dual RFGs. Right now I have just the one installed and its seems to be flowing around the tank pretty good. I'm going to install the eheim when it comes and see what kind of flow I get. I also printed a new chamber 2 plug in purple to match the rest of the purple I'm using.

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3sgterror

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New update, I received the Eheim compact 1000 today. Man that thing moves some water. I am having an issue with the noise though. Its mainly vibration transfer because when I put the pump in a bucket to test, it was dead silent. Hopefully it just needs a break in period.

I also tried the dual random flow nozzle. With this pump and the dual setup, I thought it was too much water movement. I'm not sure if that is actually a thing. So I reverted back to a single.
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3sgterror

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Since I have time to kill while this thing cycles, I was looking for other upgrades / modifications to do.

I am going to be running reef-pi on my main tank, using Robotank (@robsworld78 ). Months ago, I bought the Leviathan (@Schreiber ) board to build out the reef-pi setup myself, but decided to go with Robotank instead to save on some time and effort.

With that, I had this extra Leviathan board laying around. From a previous project, I also had a raspberry pi touch screen and an extra raspberry pi. So I had all the makings of building a second controller for this Evo QT tank.

This build out would be much simpler, only tracking temperature and controlling my heater and should I want to get nuts with this tanks controller, it would be easy to in the future.

I started off finding some parts on thingiverse. First up was legs and a housing for the screen.
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Next up was assembly. Pi is installed with the Leviathan board on top. Pulling power and ground from the for screen from the leviathan. I still need to work out a solution for the back to protect everything, but for now everything is out of the way.

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3sgterror

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All assembled.
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Raspberry OS installed, reef-pi (thanks @Ranjib and other contributors) loaded, kiosk mode enabled on the pi. Now it boots directly into reef-pi without any other unwanted items on the screen.
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Also purchased a Kasa KP303 so that I could control my equipment through the reef-pi.
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Ranjib

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whoa :0) . your setup is end to end thought-out. Off to great start.
I have not used the official touch screen for a long time, let me know if you find it buggy..
 

robsworld78

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All assembled.
PXL_20201207_180737814.MP.jpg

Raspberry OS installed, reef-pi (thanks @Ranjib and other contributors) loaded, kiosk mode enabled on the pi. Now it boots directly into reef-pi without any other unwanted items on the screen.
PXL_20201207_181011444.jpg

Also purchased a Kasa KP303 so that I could control my equipment through the reef-pi.
PXL_20201207_180923651.jpg

That looks great, good job!
 
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3sgterror

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whoa :0) . your setup is end to end thought-out. Off to great start.
I have not used the official touch screen for a long time, let me know if you find it buggy..
Only issue that I have found thus far, and this is probably my fault, is that there is no touch screen keyboard.

So if I want to make changes to naming, settings, anywhere typing is needed, then I handle that from a tablet or my phone. Again this is probably because I didn't install an onscreen keyboard.

There have been no bugs of any kind and its actually been up and running for about a week now.
 

robsworld78

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Only issue that I have found thus far, and this is probably my fault, is that there is no touch screen keyboard.

So if I want to make changes to naming, settings, anywhere typing is needed, then I handle that from a tablet or my phone. Again this is probably because I didn't install an onscreen keyboard.

There have been no bugs of any kind and its actually been up and running for about a week now.
Did you try enabling the "display" setting on settings page?
 

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Great execution so far! I'm looking forward to future updates.

Just out of curiosity, would you be able to estimate your filament cost for printing that media basket?

It sounds like you printed the plug for a tight fit, which is really nice. It blows my mind that the plug provided by inTank is so loose and has to be glued.
 
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3sgterror

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Great execution so far! I'm looking forward to future updates.

Just out of curiosity, would you be able to estimate your filament cost for printing that media basket?

It sounds like you printed the plug for a tight fit, which is really nice. It blows my mind that the plug provided by inTank is so loose and has to be glued.
Here is the specific basket that I used from Thingiverse
Media Basket

I use Prusa Slicer for all my models and the estimate that it gives is $4. That may be total costs though because I use prusament, which is $25 a roll, and I barely used 1/10 of the roll.
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The plug fits perfectly in my setup and no glue was required at all. It is a tight fit. Here is the model for the plug in case anyone wants it. I take no credit, I just found both of these on Thingiverse.
Fluval Plug
 

Ranjib

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Only issue that I have found thus far, and this is probably my fault, is that there is no touch screen keyboard.

So if I want to make changes to naming, settings, anywhere typing is needed, then I handle that from a tablet or my phone. Again this is probably because I didn't install an onscreen keyboard.

There have been no bugs of any kind and its actually been up and running for about a week now.
Search for “onscreen keyboard” for pi touch display and you should find some articles on matchbox-keyboard , that does this. I have tried this route, and it works fairly well. There’s a chrome plugin as well, but I have never tried that.
 
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3sgterror

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Search for “onscreen keyboard” for pi touch display and you should find some articles on matchbox-keyboard , that does this. I have tried this route, and it works fairly well. There’s a chrome plugin as well, but I have never tried that.
Whelp, I tried to get the on screen keyboard setup over the weekend, but to no avail.

Apparently, the built in functionality has to be toggled each time, but since I am in kiosk mode, I can't access the toggle. I found some references to setting up a different keyboard, but couldn't really find step by step directions. The extent of my knowledge of programming and raspberry pi's is I need to find a step by step or else I'm SOL.

No big deal as I don't really see myself making many changes on this controller. Once I configure an ATO and water level sensor, that will be the extent of what I want out of this one, plus I'll always have my phone on me should I need to type.
 

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