WarEaglesReef
Active Member
After being a long time lurker of the R2R community, I figured I'd finally dive in and be an active participant. So I'm gonna play a little catch up since it's been a handful of months my tank has been up and running, but I wanted to get a build thread set up to document my progress. So bear with me, this first one's gonna be a long one. 
In September I decided to back Biota Aquariums' startup company on Indiegogo and give saltwater a try since it's something I'd always wanted to do and they were full of resources and advice on how to get started as a newbie. Loved their philosophy of introducing new reefers to the hobby by putting together a foolproof package of everything you'd need to get up and running (tank, salt, live rock, fish, coral) all sent in the right order so your tank is properly cycled by the time your fish and coral arrive. I really liked their views on sustainably aquacultured livestock and their want to try and increase conservation efforts through education, and parsing it out it was maybe a little more expensive than if I'd bought everything individually, but having their support and knowledge from the get go was worth the tiny upcharge. Overall they've been a really incredibly awesome company to deal with.
Got my tank in November, and a few weeks later they sent me my live rock.
Kicked off my cycle and waited patiently until after the new year and then they sent me the fish/coral that came with the package I purchased. Two standard ocellaris clowns, a Rainford's goby, two leather corals, some zoas, and a frag of xenia.
The clowns were immediately friendly and curious while the goby spent his first week and a half digging out all the sand from under my live rock to make himself at home and hiding from me every time I came in the room. Everything acclimated great aside from one of the leather corals that was sent to me that didn't end up surviving. Customer support on Biota's end was awesome in that department. I was told they were having lots of issues with that type of leather coral so they had decided to send me one of their aquacultured neon green neptheas instead. Fortunately it did really well and has been one of my favorite corals in the tank. Here's the non survivor and its replacement:
At the end of January I was starting to have a bit of algae issues since the one thing not provided was a cleanup crew (although I hear they are breeding snails to include in the future), so I headed out to my LFS and picked up some hermits, nassarius snails, and a cleaner shrimp. The shrimp has an awesome personality and I love the pop of color he adds to the tank.
One hermit in particular enjoys being a daredevil and climbing up the corners of the glass using the tiny bit of silicone as footholds. He'd get a couple inches from the top and then lose his grip and fall. Still waiting for the day he Houdinis himself out of the tank when I'm not watching.
Mid February my smaller clown started having a weird issue with his slime coat that I had trouble with. Added some water conditioner I had on hand to the tank since it also had stuff in it to assist in regenerating slime coat, and that worked pretty much overnight and he's been good ever since.
I continued to battle algae so I added two trochus snails to the mix to work on the glass and hair algae. At this point I picked up a Red Sea Phosphate Pro kit and started to see steadily rising phosphate numbers so I decided to start running GFO in a homemade egg crate media basket (rather than the sponge that comes stock with the Evo) to help get those under control.
At the end of February I went to Reefstock here in Denver and picked up a ton of new frags to color up the tank a bit as well as a little Koralia nano pump to up the flow in my tank, and a Red Sea test kit for Ca/Alk/Mg to keep an eye on those since I'd taken a step up to LPS corals from softies.
Put my three new euphyllias and duncan frag on a new little rock I added to spread things out and add a bit more dimension to the tank. Here they are starting to open up a few hours after being added to the tank:
Got a really pretty frag of ricordea and some orange acans from an awesome group of guys who'd brought their frags all the way from New Mexico to be at Reefstock. They gave me lots of good advice on how to take care of all the new stuff I got which was greatly appreciated.
Last but not least, I got this really pretty frag of alveopora that ended up being way larger than it looked at Reefstock once it got comfortable and opened all the way up at home.
I ended up losing the frag of hammer coral I got at Reefstock. It just never acclimated well and totally bit the bullet a few weeks after adding it to the tank. Everything else continued to thrive and grow and I started dosing calcium to keep up with the new stony corals while I finished out the bag of regular instant ocean salt I was using. Switched to Reef Crystals after, and calcium levels are much easier to keep up with now. At this point the GFO started working really well and I was super happy to no longer need to scrape the glass off every other day with a razor blade.
Played around with where the corals are in my tank for a few weeks until finding good places where they were all happy and had plenty of space to stay away from each other (that purple torch does NOT play nice with the other euphyllia). At this point the Rainford's goby (Gobi-Wan Kenobi) is now super friendly and out of his cave the majority of the time sifting sand and dropping it on my acans. He's such a gorgeous fish.
Mid-March I continued to slowly add to my cleanup crew and brought home three little zebra hermits and a couple more nassarius snails. One of the zebras really enjoys squeezing himself between all the zoas and chillin' out.
My cleaner shrimp also spawned hundreds of little baby shrimp one evening which I was not expecting. The clown fish and corals had themselves an epic midnight snack and there were none left in the morning. But it was cool to see them dart around the tank for a while. The cleaner shrimp has had two more clutches of eggs since then, but neither of them were fertilized so I'm glad I got to see that happen the one time that it did.
At the end of March my hair algae had gotten a bit ridiculous in places, so I followed my LFS's advice and added a tiny little tuxedo urchin who turned out to be an absolute lawnmower. In less than two weeks he had all of it destroyed and now happily eats seaweed that I feed him to make sure he leaves my coraline algae alone. He is a big fan of accessorizing with hats of any kind that he can find in the tank from GSP to zoas.
Beginning of April I headed down south to check out CoralCon in Colorado Springs. Made it through the blizzard conditions and picked up three frags for crazy awesome prices. A candy cane, a gold hammer, and a really pretty frag of encrusting goniopora that I was rather mesmerized by.
When I got home I also noticed the new hammer frag I picked up actually had two more tiny heads starting to grow underneath, so I'm excited to watch that one grow.
Now it's mid-April and my little Evo is really starting to look like a mini ocean in a box. Everything is thriving (except the goniopora which needs more light...AI Prime on its way from Amazon as I type) and it's safe to say I'm officially hooked on this incredibly fun hobby. The first step is admitting you have an addiction, right?
In September I decided to back Biota Aquariums' startup company on Indiegogo and give saltwater a try since it's something I'd always wanted to do and they were full of resources and advice on how to get started as a newbie. Loved their philosophy of introducing new reefers to the hobby by putting together a foolproof package of everything you'd need to get up and running (tank, salt, live rock, fish, coral) all sent in the right order so your tank is properly cycled by the time your fish and coral arrive. I really liked their views on sustainably aquacultured livestock and their want to try and increase conservation efforts through education, and parsing it out it was maybe a little more expensive than if I'd bought everything individually, but having their support and knowledge from the get go was worth the tiny upcharge. Overall they've been a really incredibly awesome company to deal with.
Got my tank in November, and a few weeks later they sent me my live rock.
Kicked off my cycle and waited patiently until after the new year and then they sent me the fish/coral that came with the package I purchased. Two standard ocellaris clowns, a Rainford's goby, two leather corals, some zoas, and a frag of xenia.
The clowns were immediately friendly and curious while the goby spent his first week and a half digging out all the sand from under my live rock to make himself at home and hiding from me every time I came in the room. Everything acclimated great aside from one of the leather corals that was sent to me that didn't end up surviving. Customer support on Biota's end was awesome in that department. I was told they were having lots of issues with that type of leather coral so they had decided to send me one of their aquacultured neon green neptheas instead. Fortunately it did really well and has been one of my favorite corals in the tank. Here's the non survivor and its replacement:
At the end of January I was starting to have a bit of algae issues since the one thing not provided was a cleanup crew (although I hear they are breeding snails to include in the future), so I headed out to my LFS and picked up some hermits, nassarius snails, and a cleaner shrimp. The shrimp has an awesome personality and I love the pop of color he adds to the tank.
One hermit in particular enjoys being a daredevil and climbing up the corners of the glass using the tiny bit of silicone as footholds. He'd get a couple inches from the top and then lose his grip and fall. Still waiting for the day he Houdinis himself out of the tank when I'm not watching.
Mid February my smaller clown started having a weird issue with his slime coat that I had trouble with. Added some water conditioner I had on hand to the tank since it also had stuff in it to assist in regenerating slime coat, and that worked pretty much overnight and he's been good ever since.
I continued to battle algae so I added two trochus snails to the mix to work on the glass and hair algae. At this point I picked up a Red Sea Phosphate Pro kit and started to see steadily rising phosphate numbers so I decided to start running GFO in a homemade egg crate media basket (rather than the sponge that comes stock with the Evo) to help get those under control.
At the end of February I went to Reefstock here in Denver and picked up a ton of new frags to color up the tank a bit as well as a little Koralia nano pump to up the flow in my tank, and a Red Sea test kit for Ca/Alk/Mg to keep an eye on those since I'd taken a step up to LPS corals from softies.
Put my three new euphyllias and duncan frag on a new little rock I added to spread things out and add a bit more dimension to the tank. Here they are starting to open up a few hours after being added to the tank:
Got a really pretty frag of ricordea and some orange acans from an awesome group of guys who'd brought their frags all the way from New Mexico to be at Reefstock. They gave me lots of good advice on how to take care of all the new stuff I got which was greatly appreciated.
Last but not least, I got this really pretty frag of alveopora that ended up being way larger than it looked at Reefstock once it got comfortable and opened all the way up at home.
I ended up losing the frag of hammer coral I got at Reefstock. It just never acclimated well and totally bit the bullet a few weeks after adding it to the tank. Everything else continued to thrive and grow and I started dosing calcium to keep up with the new stony corals while I finished out the bag of regular instant ocean salt I was using. Switched to Reef Crystals after, and calcium levels are much easier to keep up with now. At this point the GFO started working really well and I was super happy to no longer need to scrape the glass off every other day with a razor blade.
Played around with where the corals are in my tank for a few weeks until finding good places where they were all happy and had plenty of space to stay away from each other (that purple torch does NOT play nice with the other euphyllia). At this point the Rainford's goby (Gobi-Wan Kenobi) is now super friendly and out of his cave the majority of the time sifting sand and dropping it on my acans. He's such a gorgeous fish.
Mid-March I continued to slowly add to my cleanup crew and brought home three little zebra hermits and a couple more nassarius snails. One of the zebras really enjoys squeezing himself between all the zoas and chillin' out.
My cleaner shrimp also spawned hundreds of little baby shrimp one evening which I was not expecting. The clown fish and corals had themselves an epic midnight snack and there were none left in the morning. But it was cool to see them dart around the tank for a while. The cleaner shrimp has had two more clutches of eggs since then, but neither of them were fertilized so I'm glad I got to see that happen the one time that it did.
At the end of March my hair algae had gotten a bit ridiculous in places, so I followed my LFS's advice and added a tiny little tuxedo urchin who turned out to be an absolute lawnmower. In less than two weeks he had all of it destroyed and now happily eats seaweed that I feed him to make sure he leaves my coraline algae alone. He is a big fan of accessorizing with hats of any kind that he can find in the tank from GSP to zoas.
Beginning of April I headed down south to check out CoralCon in Colorado Springs. Made it through the blizzard conditions and picked up three frags for crazy awesome prices. A candy cane, a gold hammer, and a really pretty frag of encrusting goniopora that I was rather mesmerized by.
When I got home I also noticed the new hammer frag I picked up actually had two more tiny heads starting to grow underneath, so I'm excited to watch that one grow.
Now it's mid-April and my little Evo is really starting to look like a mini ocean in a box. Everything is thriving (except the goniopora which needs more light...AI Prime on its way from Amazon as I type) and it's safe to say I'm officially hooked on this incredibly fun hobby. The first step is admitting you have an addiction, right?
