My 50L fluval evo reef

[lachies]

Thought I’d better start a journal about  this tanks journey So here goes.

 

Background:

 I first got into marine aquariums about 15 years ago and kept a 300L plumbed tank. This was at my parents house  when time and money were plentiful. Since then I now have mortgages and A great family that iv been putting all my time into. My oldest boy loves all things nature and started showing some interest in marine life that was all I needed. Bam endless hours at night annoying my wife and reading up about the hobby and researching. A few things have changed since then but I remembered liking nano reef for info way back then so found myself on here again during my search for info, the small footprint, small water volume and smaller cost of a nano was an easy decision for me to make. So I Sold off all my Equipment left in the garage from my old tank and headed out the one of the LFS to spend it on a shiny new tank and get back into the hobby, soo pumped. Ended up coming home with an ocean free nano after one night with more reading and research decided to try and exchange for the fluval I had been wanting but talked out of by the sales assistant. Got the tank I wanted home and set it all up to look at it for a week and continue researching. 

startup: 

- Substrate

Love a nice sand bed so I ended up adding around 5kg of  crushed coral aragonite sand For the substrate. 

- Water
have a four stage RO/DI water filter so I’m making my own tank water with that decided on using Red Sea salt as the parameters it produces are what I was after 

-filter 

The evo has a pretty basic (and what I thought ) muddled up filter in the back) so I decided to make an eggcrate media rack for the first chamber after the overflow and put in filter floss for some mechanical with two rack underneath for media. Threw the bag of carbon that came with the tank on the first rack and the bio max media (Also stock with tank) on the second. added some siporax media into the second chamber as I planned on ditching the bio max on the first change over. 
-light 

stock

-return

stock

-flow

hydor koralia

- heater 

aqua one 50w

 

Threw in 4.5 kg’s or real reef rock put in some store bought ammonium chloride and dr Tim’s one and only to begin the cycling process. 

 

 

[lachies]

On 8/2/2020 at 8:19 PM, lachies said:

 

Been a while. 
wirk has been busy and been renovating. Tank is around about 1 year 3 months old. Made a few changes since the first post that I will try and put up in a list later. Around the 10 month mark a purchased a yellow clown gobie from a lfs. This fish triggered a chain reaction of set backs in the tank. Firstly it had developed ich, I have no other tanks so basically set myself up for failure,this then unfortunately killed the gobie and my other two fish. With the fish gone and life being busy lost the will to keep putting in effort. Tank went downhill fast no feeding and fish caused a huge Dino outbreak lost most of the coral frags I had and the clean up crew. This turned into a big hair algae problem. Currently tank is looking great have restocked fish and some corals and have some pest fighting experience    Under my belt. Pics of part of my hair algae solution and a new Duncan coral I’ve added.

 

 

 

[debbeach13]

Glad to see you hung in there. Good luck turning things around.

 

[lachies]

Changes since the first lot of pics include 

• removing the lid as the tank was running to hot due to the climate where I live. 
• adding a bottle ato, removing the lid makes the water loss jump up a fair bit so ato during the day is a must 

• added a new light as stock one was built into lid, went with an illumagic blaze x mini and their nano mounting arms

•Swapped my hydor wave maker out for a jebao as o wanted to control flow, use the hydor to mix new salt water now. 
• media in the back is just filter floss and matrix carbon as well as the siporax for biological. I’ll get some pics today 

[lachies]

[Zer0]

I really like your aquascape, it looks great! All the tank needs is a little TLC and it will bounce back for sure!