ZipAdeeZoa's Fluval evo 13.5 Build thread

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Very nice indeed...may I as where you bought them and what light are you using....thanks

You certainly may! All of my corals so far have come from fragbox.ca, its an awesome place for corals in Canada! The light on the evo is a AI Prime HD and the light on the QT tank is a kessil A80. I was using the light that came with the evo up until a few months ago on the QT tank, everything was growing and doing alright but the colors always faded somewhat, thee kessil so far is keeping them to true to how they arrived!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Nice additions!

Thanks!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Some quick updates on a few things!

My frag tank has been getting progressively cloudier for a little while now and it seem to have escalated to full bacterial bloom rather recently. I've upped water changes from 2 gallons once a week to 4 gallons 1-2 a week and will likely keep doing that until this hopefully sorts itself out. I'm looking for a small UV sterilizer locally but so far no dice, wish I didn't throw out the one I had for my freshwater tank a few years back! I think it may be from adding to many corals at once;Hilarious

I got some new corals again... My boss got a nice sully stocked frag tank from a store thats shutting down so my boss, coworker and I spent our Monday holiday getting that sorted. The boss was super happy with how it turned out so asides from paying us he said my coworker and I could have a few free corals each. I thought it would be terribly rude to pass that up so I helped myself to another hammer...

Fast forward a few more days and Fragbox updates their website with the usual awesome stuff. The standouts where some really neat blastomussa and a WYSIWYG orange hammer that really stood out to me. I had seen orange hammers before but this one seemed unique. I thought about it for a few days and realized although not an ideal time, I'd regret passing it up so I came home and went to add it to my cart when I saw the sole crushing words "Out of Stock". I was pretty bummed until today... My girlfriend and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary together today and we exchanged gifts. I had snuck off one day while she was working to photograph her horse, tortoise and dog and got them all printed and framed- she had no idea what to get me until she saw me staring at the hammer, she was the reason it was out of stock!;Hilarious She said she knew there were some others I wanted so I added the blastos to the order along with a new frag of sunny D's since mine kind of wilted away and I wanted to try them again.

Tomorrow I have to go down to the store and feed the fish so I'm going to pick up another kessil and set up a second frag QT tank for the new corals that are coming on Tuesday! I think a second qt tank is long over due at this point and 5 gallons is pretty easy to whip up and breakdown if need be. I'll get photos of everything up tomorrow!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well i got the tank set p in time and the corals unboxed before I left for work! The all look awesome and our very healthy however on of them is definitely not the one I ordered ;Hilarious I emailed fragbox so we'll see what happens, I think I'll most likely just have to pay shipping again which I don't mind, I just hope they didn't send it to someone else. I'll probably add few more corals to the order if thats the case... you know.. to... If I admit it- is it still a problem?

I can't get over the hammers colours, it looks like one of those crazily photoshopped corals even when I'm sitting there staring right at it. Unfortunately the skeleton got slightly chipped in shipping and there is a small piece hanging on by some tissue. I'm still new to hammers so I'm unsure of what the best course of action is although I feel like the answer is likely just leave it be. With that said I'm open to advice! For now I'll just post the photo of the hammer, forgot to take photos of everything else;Hilarious

I also found out we had a nano UV sterilizer at work so I grabbed one of those when I got the kessil and put it in the main frag tank so fingers crossed that takes care of that!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well the Coral mix up has been resolved! Luckily they still had the frag I ordered so I took the free shipping option they offered and was looking for corals to add to the order and saw some nice acans... Unfortunately they where sold before I could scoop them up. However I emailed fragbox asking if they had any others lying around and they did! The new frag qt is starting to fill up rather quickly and they just posted some cool frogspawns... we'll see what happens now that the other QT tank has more than less cleared up and that batch is nearly done their QT!

I think the big question now is how much I want to commit to this tank.I think my options are really start to get into the nitty gritty, let things grow, get into testing, dosing and the works, continuing to invest into this tank. Or do I look into doing something bigger. I think its safe to say I enjoy this hobby enough to upgrade but I don't think that will be for some time. For now I think I'll work on my reefing skills within the confines of my nano. I think at this point in time I've proven to myself that I can keep these beautiful creatures but I need to start developing more reefing skills. Since starting this journey I've learned a lot and as addicting as it is to get new corals I thinks it's time to start focusing on growing my garden, fragging and sharing these gorgeous corals with other reefers. I'm at the cottage with my family right now but my girlfriend sent these to me today and everything looks good! she did not use the filter for the tank photos so apologies for the bluer photos. I've also attached some photos of the new corals I took before leaving!

 

[Glass Algae]

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!

Awesome! Definitley following this build!! Looks great!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Awesome! Definitley following this build!! Looks great!

Thank you very much! I'll be sure to follow yours as well, it's awesome to see what other people are doing with their evos!

 

[najer]

Never under estimate the power of the Evo!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Never under estimate the power of the Evo!

Do you have an evo build thread or do you just take these as you go? ;Hilarious

 

[najer]

AIO Build - Najer's grubby puddle!

Today was a good day to give this tank it's own journal, a couple of things happened in the past 2 days that made it change. I guess about 6 months old, it has been through a few guises, previous two tanks cracking and is 13 G - 52 litres running a heater and return pump. It still has part of my...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well Fragbox struck again... They caught me with my guard down- I'm the victim here!

I saw this neon green hammer that they had and instantly knew I had to have it. I've been enjoying my hammers so much I wanted to try another member of there group so I scooped up some frogspawn as well. I also grabbed a frag of golden acan. Everything except for the acan is WYSIWYG and should be arriving on the 25! I Just have to let the GF know I bought more coral- what could possibly go wrong;Dead

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

AIO Build - Najer's grubby puddle!

Today was a good day to give this tank it's own journal, a couple of things happened in the past 2 days that made it change. I guess about 6 months old, it has been through a few guises, previous two tanks cracking and is 13 G - 52 litres running a heater and return pump. It still has part of my...

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks! I was not going to find that on my own;Hilarious

 

[Clyde Nowlan]

Block that hole in the middle of the rear chamber, forces water through the filter better.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Block that hole in the middle of the rear chamber, forces water through the filter better.

Thanks for the recommendation! It has crossed my mind however I've decided against it for now since doing so would mean only the return chamber would see a change in evaporation and I don't think I can fit the ato sensors in that chamber at the moment so for now it will have to stay unplugged.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Sigh... I am not proud of this... In my defence I've been waiting for a frag of Rainbow incinerators for a while. My defence for the acans however is just that I like them;Hilarious Both of them we're on sale too so they've been added to my order!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Tonight was a big night! I moved almost all the corals from QT tank into the DT with the exceptions being the blasto since I saw what appeared to be snall vermatid snails on its base so I glued over them but want to keep those out of the DT if possible. The pipe organ and one of clove polyps frags are also staying in the QT as they both look like they need some time. I also didn’t want to exceed the amount of epoxy recommended for a tank this size.

There was a slight incident with the ATO, I forgot to turn it off when I drained the tank to add the corals... Salinity went from 1.026 to 1.024 before I caught it. I was quite worried about what a swing that size could do to my tank and its residents but after being reassured by others here on R2R I will just be topping off the tank salt water manually until the salinity gets back to where I want it. New corals come tomorrow and I'm really excited!

However putting all those frags in my tank today made me realize I probably wont have space for all of them so I’ll have to pick and choose, stop buying more corals ( ;Hilarious ) and focus more on growing things out. I’m sure I’ll feel differently in a week but I think did an excellent job picking corals thats look awesome, hardy and lower maintenance. Thats enough words, here are some before and after photos!

 

[SMSREEF]

Gorgeous tank! I’m gonna follow along on this build.
What is this leather? It’s beautiful.

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Gorgeous tank! I’m gonna follow along on this build.
What is this leather? It’s beautiful.

Thank you very much! Thats my bright green nepthea (at least thats what I bought it as). Its one of my favourites and I can't wait to see how it fills out!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Alright- I'm alive and so is the tank ;Hilarious

Not only that but a lot has been happening! my work hours recently doubled (still below average but a big change for me) and as a result Being active on the forums hasn't been the priority but now that I have a moment lets bring this thread back up to speed!

New inverts additions!

My second QT Tank needed some CUC so I swung by one of my LFS's that I don't get out to very often ( I try to buy things from all my LFS, we're all in this together)! And grabbed another trochus snail (Athena). Next I wanted a hermit crab and had been eyeing one little fella that came as stowaway in that frag tank we setup at the shop so I scooped him up the following day.

Lastly a customers 125 reef tank had a leak and they had to bring in their livestock. They felt they didn't have enough time to set it back up and told us to just sell everything. They brought in their fish and inverts and my boss asked me to drip them into our rack. I popped off the lid and saw a halloween hermit crab, my first time seeing one in the area! I Bagged him up for myself immediately and he know resides in my 10 gallon QT tank. He is by far the biggest inver I have and regularly "rearranges" the frag racks but he is totally worth the trouble. I've named him Jacko partially for jacko-lantern, partially for the dad bod ;Hilarious

New Corals

I couldn't resist... Fragbox posted an acan the likes of which I've never seen before along with a handful of other corals I had been eyeing for a while. Not necessarily pieces for my display but species I wanted to get more experience with since I'm now my LFS's coral guy (by default). I also thought it might be cool to just try and grow some out and try my hand at fragging. One I did get for the display tank was another cool hammer however I misjudged the size of it in the wysiwyg photo and I'm not sure of it will fit in the evo... Other than that I got some more acans, a lemon lime favia, teal candy canes, long stem duncan, Armageddons and freebie frag of blowpops because of a delay with my order.

There was an incident with the long awaited rainbow incinerators... They got knocked off there plug in shipping and when they arrived I figured no big deal I'll just glue it back on. After dipping I put a nice dab of super glue on a new plug and picked up the nub of zoas only to drop them face down into the glue;Dead I immediately tried to wipe off as much of it as possible and put it back right side up but the damage was done. over the next few days they turned white and then into mush. Luckily on my latest order they posted another frag and I scooped it up. Happy to report that all the new frags are doing well and new incinerators have gone from 2 heads to 6 in the past few weeks!

I moved the Orange hammer and all the other blastos into the DT to make room for thee new orders and everything is doing really well both in QT and the display! I think thats enough words, How about some photos!

 

[ZipAdeeZoa]

Well at the request of Rev himself I'm updating my build thread with a bit of a solemn reality check. I got home tonight pretty late from work and went into the critter room to check on my QT tanks and saw the body of my new little yellow legged hermit crab lying beside its shell. I'm really not sure what caused his demise, he seemed content eating the few algaes growing on the various plugs and enjoyed the odd LPS pellet that missed its mark. The only kind of strange thing was that when he molted a little while ago his colours became quite pale and I expected them to darken back up but he just stayed kind of a ghostly blue. Not sure if thats related. Honestly I'm pretty bummed out, I really enjoy my crabs and their antics not to mention the service they provide. I get off work a bit earlier tomorrow so maybe I'll drive to another one of my LFS and see if another crab catches my eye. I know to most reefers crabs and snails are pretty disposable but to me they are pets, I can't help but I feel I've let this one down somehow.

I didn't even get around to naming the little guy yet, RIP little buddy and thanks for the laughs.