reef-rc Fluval Evo 13G

[WarEaglesReef]

O_O SO many coral frags!! You've got some stunning pieces in there. Gonna run out of space quick as they grow!

 

[reef-rc]

O_O SO many coral frags!! You've got some stunning pieces in there. Gonna run out of space quick as they grow!

Thx WarEagle88! Small frags are the way to go on this nano size imo. Unfortunately I have not been able to keep that up 100% based on availability (i.e. purple torch and sympodium were big but there were only 1-2 pieces and I don't see them around often). Although I like acans, monti and zoas; they don't add height to the tank. It's one reason I thought I try out 3 branching SPS to give that illusion besides just torch and duncan.

I got something brewing for the upcoming growth. Can't be a responsible reefer if I let all the frags jammed in this little box long term...will share later what this is this coming weekend...

 

[reef-rc]

Galaxea's Reach...It's not friendly ;Punch

Earlier today I checked on the tank and as usual I also checked on the Galaxea as it's a problem child (not it's fault though). It's a problem because of the reach of the sweeper and the affect the sweepers have on other corals.

I watched it briefly and immediately noticed the sweeper seems to be very long today...long enough to reach the maxi carpet anemone. Sure enough, one of the longer sweeper touched the anemone and immediately attached itself and wouldn't let go . Of course the anemone immediately retreated and but the sweeper remained attached. I watched it briefly but the sweeper wasn't letting go. I had to basically put a stick into the tank and manually separate the sweeper from the anemone.

Needless to stay the anemone will be feeling the sting for a few days ;Nurse. I saw the same thing happened to one of the Duncan polyps weeks earlier and it took a week before the polyp opened up again only after I moved away from the galaxea.

So now I moved the problem child onto the frag rack by itself which I was not planning to use so soon but glad I have it handy for situation like this.

Here's a brief vid of the galaxea after me separating the sweeper from the carpet anemone...still with all its sweepers out but not fully extended though.

 

[reef-rc]

Galaxea is no more! I took it back to LFS for store credit ;Greedy.

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Galaxea is no more! I took it back to LFS for store credit ;Greedy.

Mean little frag! Looks like those would be best suited to a large tank where they can have an island all to themselves. Glad your other inhabitants will be sting free from now on!

 

[reef-rc]

Mean little frag! Looks like those would be best suited to a large tank where they can have an island all to themselves. Glad your other inhabitants will be sting free from now on!

Yes. I've read it's typically a center piece for some tank. Now I can see why [emoji6]

 

[reef-rc]

This current tank is filling up faster than I had planned or wanted. Overall progress so far so good. At this point, it's best to keep system stable and watch the frags grow out.

So earlier last week I picked up a few zoa frags along with some gently used hardware from a local reefer here. I got enough to start another nano tank .

I am currently shifting things around this weekend to accommodate the new addition. Let me just say lifting this 13.5G nano (with half-full water, rocks, sands, corals and fish) is heavy to say the least. There was zero affect on the tank as I did it during regular water change yesterday.

Before location of the Evo:

New location of the Evo:

The plan is to keep most of what's in this already in place with few exceptions based potential growth.

 

[reef-rc]

Earlier when I had returned the galaxea, I picked up 2 SPS corals in it's place.

• Butternut Stylophora. This looked to be recently fragged and was opening good @ the LFS

• unidentified - I am looking to identify this one

As of yesterday, butternut stylophora opened also 100%. The pick above was from Friday. Will look to take an updated pic later today when the lights come on. The other SPS has a few polyps extruding so that looks to take a little time to fully open.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Good looking frags!

 

[reef-rc]

Good looking frags!

Thanks! The new dark blue/purple one I am told is an Oregon Tort.

 

[Justin poirier]

Can you imagine the sweepers when this ball becomes double the current size? Easily would need 4"-6" inches around this thing. This will be an upcoming dilemma #1.

Dilemma #2 - the "odd couple" pistol shrimp and watchman goby recently started redoing the landscape around them. Here's a brief vid of their work. At this point the pair has basically built a war trench surrounding their hide out, which is a large piece of rock. The whole trench work is creating a little unsteady base for all the coral frags I have surrounding this large rock. So far it's not a big deal.

You should much appreciate it I have had a watchman and a pistol for a bout 2 weeks in the first few days my pistol created 7 holes bassicly a tunnel system and my goby has found the tunnels but he hasn't found the pistol nor have I found any new holes or the pistol

 

[reef-rc]

I am about to put the "pistol" to the pistol shrimp's head at this point.;Rage It's constantly covering my frags which I have laying around the area where it's at. A few days back it covered nearly 1/2 of a small colony of bam bam zoas. It's nice to have but is getting to a pain as I currently don't have much real estate to go around left ;Nailbiting.

With Dilemma #1 now gone; Dilemma #2 is surfacing it's head :mad:

 

[Mike N]

I am about to put the "pistol" to the pistol shrimp's head at this point.;Rage It's constantly covering my frags which I have laying around the area where it's at. A few days back it covered nearly 1/2 of a small colony of bam bam zoas. It's nice to have but is getting to a pain as I currently don't have much real estate to go around left ;Nailbiting.

With Dilemma #1 now gone; Dilemma #2 is surfacing it's head :mad:

LOL I knew it was only a matter of time once you started cramming frags in there. I'll take him off your hands if his welcome is wearing out ;Smuggrin

 

[reef-rc]

LOL I knew it was only a matter of time once you started cramming frags in there. I'll take him off your hands if his welcome is wearing out ;Smuggrin

I wished I could honestly. There is no way I can remove him now without destroying the tank in the process. Even as I typing this, the darn thing is tunneling away and redesigning the landscape to the next big rock while the watchman is watching... it's funny actually:mad:

here's a vid just taken a minute ago to prove it....ahhh...;Rage;Wideyed:mad:

 

[reef-rc]

Today I am looking to reduce the manual dosing I currently do on the tank in the evening and morning. The dosing at this point is mostly with RS Buffer Supplement and some RS Calcium. There is already kalwasser in the RODI topoff so I believe this has helped with both PH and calcium stability. The parameters on average are: Alkalinity 9.4 dKH & Calcium 450 ppm. I am currently not planning to dose Magnesium as the parameter on it has been relatively stable around 1400.

I am going to be using Kamoer X4. It's a bit more than I need for this nano. The intent here is to also use it on the upcoming Fusion 20 which I am just now starting which will have a higher need for calcium.

Anyway...here's the open boxed from the other day.

 

[reef-rc]

After a rather frustrating few hours, I was finally able to setup the dosing pump with alkalinity and is now automated. The wifi setup to the home network was actually the longest believe it or not as it was not very user friendly to find or follow to say the least.

Unit is setup to initially dos 5ml between 12AM - 12PM. This schedule is set to offset the lights schedule in order to keep the PH consistent 24/7 along with alkalinity of 9.x. I will be looking to setup calcium within the next few days as I watch this run through a few days first.

Outside the wifi setup, the dosing setup was relatively simple including how to calibrate the pump.

A few features I like about this unit are:

• Kamoer is known for dosing pump outside aquarium domain. They specialize for medical so I know they know dosing.
• If you get their container, it has both the tubing and a liquid sensor already built in which if used can plug directly into the dosing console. The mobile app has the ability to calculate how much liquid is left and based on how much you are dosing, how many days of the liquid remaining before empty...pretty kool. 2nd it has an alarm when liquid runs out.
• Now I could have gotten a less expensive dosing pump but wanted something that will last with a company that specialize in this as I have a need for dosing beyond just this tank alone.

A few things I don't like:

• Standard tubing is smaller than normal 1/4" tubing. They use 1/8".
• Depending on your need and distance, you may need additional tubing.
• Wifi setting up the unit to your home network is a pain until you understand how it works.

Here are a few pics of the setup.

Console:


My Reservior (it's the 1/2G white container; blue container is my RODI)


Container + tubing and sensor (this is a pic of the Calcium container which I will be using within a few days):




The dosing tub on top of the tank in a high flow area:


How that it is setup and automated, it's one less thing I have to do to ensure tank is stable. Leaves me more time to enjoy the tank .

 

[reef-rc]

It's almost 3 weeks since the last update as I have been busy. There have been a number of changes which I'll try to capture this coming weekend.

Dosing:
I have incorporated Calcium using the dosing pump to run opposite of the alkalinity to keep PH relatively high as possible. Basically calcium is dosed when lights are on and alkalinity is dosed is when lights are off.

New Frags:
I know I have said this before....this tank is now completely packed. It's crazy packed in. I don't know I did it but I managed to squeezed in another 6 coral frags (large green texture mushroom, glowstick acropora, forest fire digitata monti, blue stylophora, pink cats paw stylophora and a hydrophoria I believe though not clear) from this past Saturday from a road trip back from Florida. I dropped by Matt's Coral Connection on the way back and as you know it, I couldn't help myself . Add to that I had an empty cooler to keep the corals too ;Facepalm.

Anyway it was an 11 hrs drive and all frags fare very well and have been opened up since Saturday.

Dilemma #2:
Earlier I mentioned I had two dilemmas (the galaxea - now gone as was returned). The other was the constant digging of the pistol shrimp. Here's the visual of the landscape which covered up half of the bam bam zoas.

It doesn't look impressive but this landslide is 3" high and did not originate from the outside. The sand originated from inside the base rock. There is a cavern/hole below the torch coral which house the yellow watch and pistol and is basically their stronghold.

This was mostly likely the result of me plugging up the last hole they dug up with small rocks a few days back :mad:

 

[reef-rc]

Here a few shots of the 6 new frags I grabbed from a week ago. I took these shots shortly after the water change today. Each has acclimated well so far. Big concern is sufficient room to grow.

• Forest fire digitata monti

• Pydrophoria (i believe this is what this is. if so, it's aggressive)

• Pink cats paw stylophora

• Blue stylophora

• Glowstick acropora

• Green Textured Mushroom

 

[reef-rc]

It must be great at times to be a crab with multiple arms and legs and agile enough to surf on a snail high above the tank looking for food while not having to worry about falling.

Ohh...what that must be like?[emoji57]

***I just caught this scene early morning while lights are still off checking on the tank and this scene just made me smile.

 

[reef-rc]

A BATTLE HAS BEGUN in the tank....AGAINST Nudibranch!

For weeks I have been watching as one of my monti piece has been turning white and was puzzling me as to why. From the look of things it has been growing well until last few weeks the underside has been turning white for some unknown reasons. Weeks before this, another piece lost some of it's color and also turned white but that stopped before this last piece was affected.

Needless to say, I did a water change earlier this evening and took the opportunity to inspect the affected monti and guess what .....a whole crew of FREAKING NUDI!!! was underneath the frag.

That's the reason the healthy and growing piece was turning white...it was being eaten by nudibranch.

I first freaked out and quickly did a CoralRX dipped and this was what came out. Noticed the now dead nudibranchs...a lot of them for that matter on this piece alone.


Needless to say I had no choice but had to toss this nice piece out as I was not certain the dipped alone would remove any remaining eggs or that I could catch all possible eggs with my eyes. I also dipped two other pieces I had susipions on just to be sure.

Looks like I in for a battle now to eradicate nudi as I have at least 12 monti pieces in the nano.

I plan to dip all monti at the very least every 3-4 days for the next few weeks to a month for sure. Not sure I'll get wrasse as the number of fish in the tank are relatively peaceful with each other and other could cause havoc and may be hurt by the dominate frostbit clown.