ZipAdeeZoa's Fluval evo 13.5 Build thread

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Hello Everyone!

After years of research and some recent inspiration from seeing my first scorpionfish plus the release of the WWC/BRS hybrid series I felt ready to take the plunge and started to slowly order bits and pieces since late October. Unfortunately the fish I mentioned won't give up the livefoods (been working on him for about a month at work) but Taenianotus tricanthus are suppose to be pretty fussy so I'm considering Sebastapistes cyanostigma, Sebastapistes strongia or a Paracentropogon rubripinnis. I'll see whats available and go from there. For coral I'm planning on doing mainly Softies and a few LPS down the road. Any way, onto the build!

Setup:
Tank: Fluval Evo 13.5
Lights: Stock LED, might switch to a AI Hydra if I make poor financial decisions during boxing day
Pump: Sicce 0.5
Heater: Cobalt Neotherm 50w
Flow: Vividaqautics RFG
Rock: All Caribsea life rock- 1x Base, 2x shapes 1x shelf and 1x branch
Substrate: Textured ABS plastic cut to size and siliconed to the bottom
Controller: Neptune Apex jr
ATO: Neptune ATK
Chamber 1: Filter Floss, mature rock from a friends tank in a bag with some Aqeuon ceramic rings
Chamber 2: Heater, ATO and carbon
Chamber 3: Return pump


Photos are in the order of which they occurred (hopefully). You'll see that I changed the hard scape before adding water, the original concept just felt to open to me so i can only imagine how open it would have felt to a scorp. I got some other pieces and chiseled a few down to size to make some more crevices and add more surface area for coral growth. Only thing I'm not hug fan of is how central the scape is, might add a few rubble pieces or even try and shift the whole structure closer to one side and make a rubble field on the other before I epoxy it all... Open to suggestions! I'll detail the other supplies in future postAlso for anybody that likes they way the apex Mounting board looks I'll be sure to detail its assembly in the near future!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Looks great! I really like how the aquascape came out!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Looks great! I really like how the aquascape came out!

Thanks! Its the result of a 2 hour Tetris session;Hilarious

 

[NY_Caveman]

Thanks! Its the result of a 2 hour Tetris session;Hilarious

LOL!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well I'm currently on vacation in Florida and will be for the next two weeks so when I have some time to kill I'm just going to break down different aspects of the set up- Today I figured I'd go into detail on how I mounted my Neptune Apex Jr!

Lets start from the beginning- Recently I moved in with my girlfriend and instead of bringing all my odds and ends tank setups I decided to go to Home Depot and bought a Husky steel rack to setup four 40 gallon breeders... Fast forward to today and I have two 40 gallon aquariums on one level as planned but the lower level turned into everything else... My blue tongue skink, knob tailed gecko and lastly my Evo share a shelf for the time being;Hilarious

It's a long story but I ended up with a black plank thats 12 inches wide, 2 inches thick and 24 inches long. I drilled the top and bottom centre of the plank and got some 1/4 stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers and lined them up with the slots in the steel to place the shelves. I got a 2 inch circular drill bit and made a hole near the bottom right and glued in a 2 inch furniture grommet. I marked where I planned to install everything with a metallic sharpie and drilled it all into place.

I tried to measure the distance between the screws on the back of the controller but couldn't get consistent results so I took the screws and sat them into the controller and gently worked a twist tie around them until each screw sat in a corner leaving me with a perfect twist tie triangle which I then marked the three corners of and drilled them in for a perfect fit! If that doesn't make any sense let me know and I'll post pictures when I get back). Asides from that I wrapped some cords around each other and got some 1x1 inch mounting plates to zip tie the cables to the panel. I'll take more photos of each aspect when I get back home and add them here but for now I hope that someone who wants to mount an apex jr finds that at least a little helpful!

Its certainly far from the cleanest looking setup but I'm honestly pretty happy with how it came out. The nicest part by far is that the panel hides the first 3 1/2 inches of the tank, AKA the sump chambers! Hiding both most of the cords and sump chambers makes its look so much sharper.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

The Cycle appears to be complete- ish! I'm still following the BRS/WWC hybrid method as best I can- I seeded my tank with bacteria courtesy of some rubble from boss's 5 year old FOWLR system which I broke up into smaller pieces with a hammer. I placed them in a media bag and wriggled it down behind the annoying little piece of plastic that the skimmer is supposed to sit on in the fist chamber. next I put a half full bag of Aqueon ceramic rings, a bag of carbon and some floss on top. I threw in a piece of shrimp before I left for Florida and had someone come check on my animals every now and then. They told me it smelled for a few days and then it cleared up. When I got back I tested and Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate all tested 0 which kind of freaked me out at first but then I realized how long it had been and without a source of constant Ammonia or Nitrite and that there wouldn't be much nitrate- it was just the zero part that caught off guard.

I decided to proceed with caution, I picked up one 1/3 inch dwarf blue leg and brought him home earlier today. Before I added him I did a 10% water change and siphoned out a fair bit of grey detritus (I presume processed shrimp or dust from the crushed rubble that settled out) before floating him for 15 minutes and then releasing him into the tank. So far he's pretty much been everywhere in the tank he can possibly be, he climbs the silicone in the corners and he seems to enjoy sitting in the little ridge of the adjustable overflow weir. So far the only thing thats a little worrisome is when he looses his grip on the silicon and ends up upside down, his shell is a little to big and he can't quite seem to right himself so I've had to help him twice since I got him this morning. I'll check in the morning and the evening to make sure he isn't stuck like that for too long if he doesn't give it up. I put a tiny fighting conch and an auger shell I found while I was in Florida in there hoping he'll be able to right himself easier in either but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway I'm extremely excited to have something in the tank I can see and enjoy, it will certainly make the wait for the fish (probably still a month or two away) a little easier. I'll offer him a small piece of food tomorrow night and test the water again the next two or three days and see if I can catch a glimpse of any numbers moving around.

Light was only on for 10 mintutes so I could get a couple photos of "Hermes"- Enjoy his pride rock moment;Hilarious

 

[NY_Caveman]

Great shot of Hermes!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well we are a hair over the 1 month mark so time for an update!

With the help of fellow R2R members I was finally able to solve 90% of the issues I was having with my Neptune ATK (last 10% is an alarm I can't figure out but that will be in the controller section in the near future).

Whats new? Numbers! I was finally able to track some numbers that accumulated in the tank as I was trying to figure it out what appealed to Hermes's palette (I really didn't think that was a concern with hermit crabs but maybe my guy is just special) I tried a small piece of shrimp pellet and saw it had melted the next day so I turkey basted out the remnants and repeated with a crumb of hikari veggie wafer with the same result. I waited another day and then I tested everything and found 0 AmmoniaD) 0 NitriteD) and 10 Nitrate(;Dead). It caught me off guard how much Nitrate such a small amount of un eaten food would produce but given the size of the tank and the nutrient dense nature of such food it does make some sense. Just another reminder that I'm not in my world of fresh water anymore. Anyway I did my weekly water change and got it put it down to about 5 which is still pretty high but I think after this weeks water change it will be the realm that it should. I gave Hermes a tiny piece of mysis for his troubles which he quickly grabbed and started munching on so I guess thats what I'll be giving him every few days from now on. I'll check my nitrates again before and after my next water change.

I'm also thinking of removing the lid and seeing how drastically that affects evaporation but I have reservations regarding my sole resident and possibly a future hermit crab... Will they leave? Although I haven't seen it lately when I first introduced him I noticed that he climbed the silicone seams in all corners and made it to the top every time. I'm not sure if it was part of him settling in or not and would really hate to lose my first marine critter to that, I'm open to suggestions on the matter!

I also finally got around to to sorting out the cord mess behind the the controller board I made! I've been saving twist ties from all my purchases thus far and put several to good use. I wrapped or bundled all the slack of each wire and secured them each to a different slot in the rack behind the controller- it's pretty crammed back there but it's actually much less messy than it looks. So now the only things you can see drooping behind the control board are the cord and tubing to the PMUP which looks much cleaner! I'm going to reset the apex jr soon though (need to switch some outlets and I think starting fresh might fix the alarm issue) and so when I do that I will actually unplug everything and be able to unweave the web I made do with which will hopefully result in it looking cleaner and probably safer.

Lastly and most importantly I'm really enjoying this so far. I know I'm just getting started in this but I've learnt so much about saltwater the past few years that it just feels really good to actually implement it. I also really enjoy watching Hermes go about his day, his antics are quite comical as he goes about his day plucking pods off the rocks and doing his darknight pose on the highest branch. I threw some more shells in for him and finally caught him with the macro polyp lab lens when decided to try an auger that was way to big, he has since returned to the shell I got him with but I know he keeps trying to get into a tiny conch (even bigger than the other shell) because its always in a different position even though its in the same spot;Hilarious

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well I think its time for an update!

On February 22 I finally turned on the light! I'm really liking the AI prime and it really didn't take long to figure out how to program (Very different experience than the apex junior;Hilarious). I got in touch with the place I plan on buying the majority of my corals from and decided to run the program they do to minimize the shock although I'm still planning on running the acclimation mode when the time comes. The program is UV/purple at 40% Blues at 60% Red/White/Green at 10% from 1-10 with a 2 hour ramp up/down. So far the only uglies are on the glass, purple rock seems to be slower to grow it thus far.

Speaking of corals... I'm still a ways away from getting my test corals but my ADHD won't let me just sit around until I can add them so I figured I would start looking into placement and decided to make a really basic graphic of where I want everything to go. I tried my best to make sure the colours where complementary and to make sure that all the corals were placed in an appropriate area and made the circles cover the area I hope they will grow into, I'll do my best to frag them so that they stay that way but I made sure to give space for each frag to grow out into a nice colony. My main concern is not letting the zoa's mix, hopefully I can do that through diligent fragging. I'm thinking of making the entire bottom a mulyi coloured Ricordia florida garden. I would love to hear your thoughts! Tanks Nitrates are holding steady at 5 ppm, hopefully the addition of fish will raise that a bit because with the softy mass I'm planning I doubt that will be enough!

Lastly I've set up my really basic QT and moved some media over to get it ready for the Plectranthias inermis (whenever I find one). Going to phantom feed the tank tomorrow and test it Wednesday to see what happens. Ignore the gunk on the bottom- I messed up mixing my salt calcium precipitated, removing with water changes.

First photo is the tank with the AI prime running!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Looks great! You must be really excited. I love that planning picture. I did a lot of that kind of thing in the early stages of my tank.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Looks great! You must be really excited. I love that planning picture. I did a lot of that kind of thing in the early stages of my tank.

Thanks! I am very excited and I'm looking forward to adding corals to a near unhealthy point, sometimes I open google and go directly to the website I want to get my corals from before I remember what I actually meant to search. Even if I remember what I was going to do I still go look at the zoas first;Hilarious

I just need to figure out two things before I go a head with the above plan (when the time comes anyway). The first one is how difficult it will be to frag the zoanthids off the rock since its all epoxied in place... so far my solution is to just drain the tank a little ways and scalpel off the polyps I want. The other and much more pressing concern is the palytoxin. I'm not scared of the palytoxin although I respect it like any poison or venom I've dealt with but I'm not worried about me- The tank is in my reptile room so I'm a little worried about them being exposed. Although they respire at a very low rate compared to mammals they are still small animals and can't dilute the toxin within themselves like we can although with something so potent I doubt it makes much of a difference. The really really BIG concern is my girlfriend's parrots. Parrots are really sensitive to everything but specifically airborne chemicals. These are animals that die if you cook with a teflon pan or use an ovens "self clean" mode so if I'm fragging one room over... That obviously raises some concerns. Those might be questions for the zoa forum though.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Certain Palythoas are the most toxic. Usually the more boring looking ones are the worst. Zoas I would use caution of course, but would not be too worried.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Certain Palythoas are the most toxic. Usually the more boring looking ones are the worst. Zoas I would use caution of course, but would not be too worried.

Thanks for that, I'll definitely keep looking into it but that makes me feel much better about it.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Hello Everyone!

I realize theirs a fairly high chance some of you will be seeing this thread for the first time and thats thanks to @Crabs Mcjones who kindly moved my thread from the AIO forum to the Nano forum, thanks again! After starting my build thread I noticed that most of the fluval evo threads were in the nano forum and also found my little evo story didn't really stand out amongst some of the massive and beautiful AIO tanks. I'm not expecting this to change much about my thread other than where its found but we'll see what happens. Onto the update!

Theres been some exciting developments!

The cover: My lfs received the redsea DIY fish saver cover and I promptly went to pick it up along with some more salt (almost through my first bucket, I don't know why I find that exciting;Hilarious). I am not a handy person, I've struggled with math my entire life and I am a serious liability with power tools- Luckily I know people who can actually do all those things! With the help of my girlfriends uncle (who did all of the work but I did some serious supervising) the cover was finished in under 45 minutes! I really liked how sleek it looked on @Robin Haselden 's drop off and I have to say I'm not at all disappointed, this thing looks so slick and really doesn't take away from the tank at all! We made the cover so that it rest on the inner edge of the back chambers leaving the rear compartments open so I don't have to remove the cover to do any maintenance back there and so we could keep it a simple rectangle. The lid Isn't on the tank at the moment until I'm confident I've eliminated the salt creep from the one corner it keeps appearing in but I put it on for some photos to share how it turned out.

The uglies: Its finally begun! Brown patches one the front and back glass, some little filaments swaying on the glass and some brown/green gunk on the abs and rock! I'll whip out the macro polyplab lens tomorrow to see if I can get some close ups of the different kinds and maybe a photo of this strange little (I think) critter that looks like a really tiny jelly comb of sorts. I cranked up the whites so the browns the uglies would show better, I can't wait to see how it progresses! If you like semi-suspenseful writing then read whats below, if your in a rush- The crab is fine but I need to get my head checked.

The scare: Last Wednesday when I was siphoning the new saltwater into the tank after a water change I noticed the flow from the hose was blowing some sediment off the rock work so I tried to move it around to get more off but quickly ran out of water and decided I would use a powerhead to blow it all around before the next water change. Well the next Wednesday I did exactly that and was quite surprised by the amount of cloudiness that was coming off the rocks. While I aimed the powerhead I was on the look out for Hermes (my dwarf blue leg hermit crab) so I wouldn't send him across the tank at warp speed but couldn't find him. I didn't give it much thought until I aimed the power head under the rock work and saw bits of red, orange and blue fly all over the place! I unplugged the powerhead in a panic and sat down on a stool in front of the tank to think about what just happened. I looked closer at the multi coloured chunks and as I feared, it was pieces of my crab surrounding the shell I had seen him in the day before. I felt sick to my stomach, did I just kill Hermes? did the powerhead pull him out of his shell? was he switching shells when I blasted the poor thing to smithereens? I knew the day would come when a marine organism would perish in my care, theres a learning curve to keeping animals in captivity and sadly it often results in their early demise. I never realized how happy a little crab could make me until I put him in my tank. And it was while I recited a mental obituary for the adorable animal I had shredded into crab tempura that my ADHD caught something out of the corner of my eye. I fell off the stool, It really caught me off guard since the sole resident of my tank was no more. Once I picked myself back up I peered into thee tank and that when I saw it. Hermes-2.0 back in his original shell! Despite keeping scorpions and tarantulas most of my life I never considered he had simply molted... I had a good laugh after and hopefully if you read this far you did too;Hilarious. Last picture has the evidence of his passing circled, he ran into the cave when he realized being alive severely complicated his death, he's gone to look over the math and if he figures out what went wrong I'll post it here immediately.

Lastly I got word from my LFS, Plectranthias inermis was on their list and one will be added to the next order, I'll be sure to keep you all in the loop! Photos are in the order they were explained!

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Hey....

Nice little tank and I love your scape! I'm glad Hermes is ok... that's quite a scare. I'll read thru the rest of your thread and see what's been going on.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Hey....

Nice little tank and I love your scape! I'm glad Hermes is ok... that's quite a scare. I'll read thru the rest of your thread and see what's been going on.

Thanks!

I was pretty happy with the aquascape although after looking at other aquascapes that people have done in their evo's I must say the idea of a more open concept is starting to form in the back of my head, I realize if its change I truly want to make I should do it asap. I have day off tomorrow so I might just put aside a few hours to sit in front of the tank and think about how I feel about the current scape, what I might do differently. I'm not sure how I would go about that now that I've epoxied it all together but I'll put some thought into it. I also considering removing the honey comb wrap and painting the back of the tank black to see how that makes things pop first.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I like the idea of removing the honeycomb and black background. Should make things stand out. At the end of the day it is your tank and you must be happy with it.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

I like the idea of removing the honeycomb and black background. Should make things stand out. At the end of the day it is your tank and you must be happy with it.

I've seen others do it and it does look pretty slick, I'll certainly be doing some thinking over the next few days!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well the uglies are well on their way and the recent skyrocket in algae has lead to a sky rocket of pods, the tank is just covered in them! One thing thats has me excited is my first nuisance algae! After doing some research and asking on the Nuisance algae forum I'm confident I'm seeing the beginnings of Bryopsis! I've done some research and it seems Fluconazole is the recommended course of action so I'm planning on getting some tomorrow. I can see several different strand mostly on the glass but I think If I get the meds in the tank tomorrow I'll be able to get ahead of this without issue. I know I have to remove my activated carbon but I am going to put the empty Redsea media bag back into the tank so that any traces of bryopsis on the actual bag are taken care of and I don't have to worry about reintroducing the bryopsis when I add the carbon back into the tank after treatment.

My concerns at this time are how I should sterilize my syphon and its tubing, I'm open to suggestions! My next concern is that when I turn off the pump for maintenance the water level in the rear compartments rises for either 10 minutes (feed cycle) or 20 minutes for a water change. I could be over thinking this but what if little bits of bryopsis get deposited in those areas by the rising water level and just get reintroduced during the next feed cycle/maintenance event? a feed cycle occurs three days a week (I supplement Hermes with tiny pieces of mysis to make sure he is indeed eating something) on a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule so the longest those parts would go without water would be about 48 hours. My last concern is because my tank so immature, will the increased nitrates of skipping a water change allow a different unseen nuisance algae that could be harder to treat than the bryopsis take hold? I consistently have 5 nitrates so I imagine skipping a week would put me around 10 and another at 15. Not sure if I just feed Hermes less in that time or just allow him to graze on the uglies and the pods, I would love to hear what you all think!

Speaking of... Guess who has obtained ultimate happiness by being JUST big enough to fit into his dream house... I love the way its chipped in the perfect spot, his eye stalks wouldn't be long enough to see out if it wasn't;Hilarious

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I would normally say you shouldn't have bryposis in a tank so new, but I got it in my nano also and fairly quickly into the uglies stage. I've also never seen it grow on glass, it's usually on the rocks but here this hobby goes, proving me wrong again.

For your nitrates, I wouldn't worry about them too much. After the 14 day treatment, just perform a 'large' water change. 5 gallons should be plenty. Make sure you heat it and match salinity with your tank. I'm close to the end of my 14 days and I'll be doing a very large WC. Close to 90%