Fluval Evo 13.5 - Somewhat Budget First Reef

[DevilDuck]

Bought a few items from ReefCleaners.com -- Couple of frags of microalgae, 2 sexy shrimp, a Blue Ricordea mushroom, 4 tiny Marginella snails

 

One of the sexy shrimp claimed my RBTA the other my xenia island. Here they are flirting with death.... 

 

 

 

Cool new useless toy, Flipper DeepSee, basically a magnetic magnifying glass. Pretty neat way to magnify and obsess over your coral/fish/inverts.

[DevilDuck]

UPDATE: Spectracide is no longer recommended for reef tanks due to the potential of impurities in the manufacturing process. Just go with your aquarium specific nitrate additive.

 

Dosing Potassium Nitrate - General Discussion - Nano-Reef Community (nano-reef.com)

 

 

 

It appears my chaeto based pod refugium in chamber 2 is working a little too well. Doing some routine cleaning yesterday and found the chamber packed to the gills with almost a solid brick of chaeto. I tossed 2/3rds of it and put the rest back in after pulling it apart a little. My nitrates have dropped once again to levels below what the API test can pick up. I reduced the refugium light period from 12 hours to 8 hours (run in reverse to the main light).

 

I went to my local big box hardware store and picked up some Spectracide Stump Remover, which is pure potassium nitrate.

Per this calculator: http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm;

 

Mixed 2 tablespoons of stump remover granules to 1 cup RODI.

2ml of this solution to 13 gallons of water should increase nitrate roughly 4 ppm.

 

Tested on 03/08/2021

alk: 8.3 dkh

cal: 420 ppm

mg: 1500 ppm

salinity: 1.026 sg

po4: 0.07 ppm

no3: 5 ppm

 

I'll increase my feeding slightly and keep testing nitrates daily.

 

Mg is still sky high. I switched over from dosing 0.8ml of Tropic Marin All For Reef to CarboCalcium. Alk and Cal seem stable so far, hopefully Mg will start dropping later this week.

 

 

 

  

[mcarroll]

11 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

Per this calculator: http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm;

https://reefsuccess.com/2017/02/08/nitratecalc/

I'm partial to this one if you want to check it out.  😉

 

(On my blog but not by me, BTW.  And the other one is probably fine too. 😉)

 

11 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

My nitrates have dropped once again to levels below what the API test can pick up.

As long as phosphates don't do the same thing (ie hit zero) you should be fine.  

 

FYI, corals at least seem to do fine with minimal levels of NO3...probably because there are so many other sources of nitrogen in the tank available to them than just dissolved nitrates.

 

Other things will need detectable levels though....especially while the tank is new and maturing.

 

Still, go easy on the nitrates while you're dosing them.  Getting upside down from here – where your po4 is zero but nitrates are positive – is EVIL for your corals.  👍

 

11 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

It appears my chaeto based pod refugium in chamber 2 is working a little too well.

Seems contrary to create this nutrient problem in the display by using this adjunct system (ie cheato refugium).  

 

Why not disable the refugium and give those nutrients to your corals instead?  (Allow dissolved nutrients to come to their natural levels.)

 

 

[DevilDuck]

On 3/9/2021 at 2:13 AM, mcarroll said:

https://reefsuccess.com/2017/02/08/nitratecalc/

I'm partial to this one if you want to check it out.  😉

 

(On my blog but not by me, BTW.  And the other one is probably fine too. 😉)

 

As long as phosphates don't do the same thing (ie hit zero) you should be fine.  

 

FYI, corals at least seem to do fine with minimal levels of NO3...probably because there are so many other sources of nitrogen in the tank available to them than just dissolved nitrates.

 

Other things will need detectable levels though....especially while the tank is new and maturing.

 

Still, go easy on the nitrates while you're dosing them.  Getting upside down from here – where your po4 is zero but nitrates are positive – is EVIL for your corals.  👍

 

Seems contrary to create this nutrient problem in the display by using this adjunct system (ie cheato refugium).  

 

Why not disable the refugium and give those nutrients to your corals instead?  (Allow dissolved nutrients to come to their natural levels.)

 

 

You have a good point, if the chaeto refugium is doing more hard than good, it is hard to justify keeping it around. I may keep it running on a minimum 4 hour photo period to see how it goes since I've already invested in setting it up and it's easy to increase the export if I do get a nitrate spike by adjusting the photo period and increasing the chaeto growth rate.

 

  

[DevilDuck]

Finally got my nitrates under control. They spiked up to 40 ppm earlier in the week due to overdosing potassium nitrate and overfeeding. I upped the photo period of the chaeto refugium back up to 10 hours and amazingly nitrate is back down to around 5 ppm today! Phosphate has been stable at .05 ppm. 

 

Noticed some new hitchhikers today. I think these are pineapple sponges or sycpha sponges. They are appearing on the bottom of my favia and a few have popped up in random locations around the tank. Unless they start growing over the favia, I'm leaving them as a curiosity for now.

 

 

 

I highly recommend frags from ebay seller robbimaso7. I ordered some Sunset Monti (my first SPS!) and a small rainbow lobo from Robbie. Everything was extremely well packed and the frag size generous. Each frag plug was placed in a protective plastic cup and triple bagged! The box was foam lined with heat packs. 

 

 

 

Some additional shots of macro algae I bought from @johnmaloney aka reefcleaners.com

 

Red gracilaria and halimeda

 

Caulerpa Prolifera, I don't clean the back wall of my tank to give the cuc a place to graze.

 

 

 

Obligatory shot of Larry the Tiger Sand Conch, my favorite tank inhabitant. He's got a lot of new shell growth.

 

FTS

[DevilDuck]

I traded a bunch of xena to a local reefer for this amazing gorgonian! Not crazy about where it's placed now. Letting it acclimate and settle in before I move it again.

Check out the polyp extension on this guy!

 

Dosing 1ml of CarboCalcium daily, all parameters holding steady so far!

 

 

[DevilDuck]

Pineapple sponge update. 

 

 

The pineapple sponge growing at the base of my favia was getting uncomfortably close to the polyps. I pulled off the large fully formed "pineapple" and dropped it back into the tank. Dipped the favia in Revive and scrubbed off the remaining sponge with a soft toothbrush. Finished with a 5 min dip in iodine.

 

There is some tissue recession at the base of the favia on the side that faces the back of the tank. Hopefully with the sponge gone and a fresh dip the favia will start to recover.

 

 

Also found my first bubble algae growing on my new sunset monti frag. Pulled the frag and sliced off the bubble algae before it spreads.

 

 

Picked up a classic book at the half price books store!

 

 

 

[mcarroll]

On 3/22/2021 at 12:19 PM, DevilDuck said:

The pineapple sponge growing at the base of my favia was getting uncomfortably close to the polyps. I pulled off the large fully formed "pineapple" and dropped it back into the tank. Dipped the favia in Revive and scrubbed off the remaining sponge with a soft toothbrush. Finished with a 5 min dip in iodine.

Personally I would not worry about a little encroachment like that as long as the coral was still prospering....and it actually looked great in the photo.  You can eventually expect the same thing to happen between corals when they grow against each other.

 

On 3/22/2021 at 12:19 PM, DevilDuck said:

Also found my first bubble algae growing on my new sunset monti frag. Pulled the frag and sliced off the bubble algae before it spreads.

One of the better algae to have....it looks nice!!  

 

How is that Monti. frag doing overall?  It looks like there has been some tissue recession recently....I see some tissue starting to grow, but looks like only in a small area.

 

[JustReading]

Your tank looks so much better then mine but everytime I come in here I realize how close I must be following you  unbeknownst to me. I also noticed nitrates and ammonia undetectable over last week. On the weekend I got the same stump remover and dosed 1tsp......which ended up bringing my Nitrates like to 80 smh. Two water changes later I'm testing when I get home today and hoping for better results. 

[natalia_la_loca]

Hi your tank is looking great! So I’m following your thread because reasons and I’m really intrigued by your chaeto refugium. Have you had any trouble with film algae or any other nuisance algae growing in the back chamber? It seems to be a common problem with chaeto fuges in AIO systems.

[DevilDuck]

11 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Personally I would not worry about a little encroachment like that as long as the coral was still prospering....and it actually looked great in the photo.  You can eventually expect the same thing to happen between corals when they grow against each other.

 

One of the better algae to have....it looks nice!!  

 

How is that Monti. frag doing overall?  It looks like there has been some tissue recession recently....I see some tissue starting to grow, but looks like only in a small area.

 

@mcarroll I've been wanting to do a dip on the favia for a while. There was some tissue recession on one edge of the favia that was getting worse. Parts of the white skeleton was getting exposed and algae was growing on it. I did really enjoy having the pineapple sponge in the tank, I plucked off as many of the larger pieces of sponge as I could and left them in the tank to hopefully find a new place to recolonize. 

 

Sunset monti is doing okay, right now it's neither growing or receding as far as I can tell. I moved it from the sandbed up to the highest point in the tank so it can get more light.

 

 

3 hours ago, JustReading said:

Your tank looks so much better then mine but everytime I come in here I realize how close I must be following you  unbeknownst to me. I also noticed nitrates and ammonia undetectable over last week. On the weekend I got the same stump remover and dosed 1tsp......which ended up bringing my Nitrates like to 80 smh. Two water changes later I'm testing when I get home today and hoping for better results. 

 

@JustReading Thank you! Great minds think alike! I added my mixing method to the chaeto refugium thread.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, natalia_la_loca said:

Hi your tank is looking great! So I’m following your thread because reasons and I’m really intrigued by your chaeto refugium. Have you had any trouble with film algae or any other nuisance algae growing in the back chamber? It seems to be a common problem with chaeto fuges in AIO systems.

@natalia_la_loca Thank you! I really enjoy reading about your pico tanks! Green film algae grows on the glass side of the refugium in front of the light and these tiny white hard dots that seem I scrap off with a razor scraper whenever I remove excess macroalgae from the AIO chamber. I haven't seen any other type of nuisance algae so far.

 

I think I've been lucky with algae in this tank so far. Most common algae i've seen is the film algae the grows on the glass and on the sandbed and some type of fuzzy red-brown algae that grows exclusively on my 3D printed random flow generator. 

 

[natalia_la_loca]

Nice! I hadn’t seen your chaeto fuge thread. Really appreciate you sharing your experiences with all this.

[DevilDuck]

Dipping my toes...and my wallet into some "fancy" corals.

 

"Bubblegum Alveopora"  Some jerk hermit crab decided to crawl over these right before I took this picture.

 

"Green and Gold Goniopora" For some reason it has these 2 freakishly long polyps most of the day. In the evening they return to normal size.

 

 

"Neon Icon Micromussa Lordhowensis (Acan Lord)" My pricest frag to date, but I couldn't resist these colors! I hope I can keep the color under my current lights.

 

My GSP and Lazer Lemon Zoas have been closed for a couple of days now. My be reacting to the fluctuating nitrate level due to my refugium experiments.

[DevilDuck]

I've always wondered how I have a thousand tiny baby trochus snails all over my tank when all I have is a single trochus snail. Well this morning the mystery was solved. I noticed that my tank was very cloudy, then looked over andI managed to catch "Turbo", my trochus snail spawning.

 

Excuse the poor video quality, my phone hates the blue lights. 

 

 

 

In bad news, this morning I lost my Alveopora frag to brown jelly disease.

 

[Cameron6796]

On 2/22/2021 at 3:11 PM, DevilDuck said:

Thanks, glad you made it through too! We're one of the lucky ones. I'm seeing really scary pictures of full tank wipes on Facebook groups. Now just like that its near 70 degrees this week, crazy Texas weather!

 

I dropped by Big Little Fish Store a few days ago too. Lots of people buying water because their pipes were still frozen or shut off, it was a madhouse. 

 

 

 

 

Haven’t fully finished reading through as I recently got an evo. But damn I have friends in Texas who were explaining their experiences off this to me (I’m in southern Ontario Canada so that’s just a normal fall or spring event to go from hot to cold so rapidly, it snowed a bit two days ago, was hot like 72 I think [we use Celsius obviously not Fahrenheit so just estimating] and today was really nice and warm again) but I feel for you guys I can only imagine the damage it caused to your infrastructure, not having snow plows or ways of removing snow and issues etc. Hoping all is well now for you. 
anyways I love your rock work very nice and open. If I didn’t chose to go more low laying aquascape I would have done the arches lie you did. The nems are a courageous move but seems you’re killing it so far 

 

cheers... eh 🇨🇦

[DevilDuck]

On 4/1/2021 at 1:55 AM, Cameron6796 said:

Haven’t fully finished reading through as I recently got an evo. But damn I have friends in Texas who were explaining their experiences off this to me (I’m in southern Ontario Canada so that’s just a normal fall or spring event to go from hot to cold so rapidly, it snowed a bit two days ago, was hot like 72 I think [we use Celsius obviously not Fahrenheit so just estimating] and today was really nice and warm again) but I feel for you guys I can only imagine the damage it caused to your infrastructure, not having snow plows or ways of removing snow and issues etc. Hoping all is well now for you. 
anyways I love your rock work very nice and open. If I didn’t chose to go more low laying aquascape I would have done the arches lie you did. The nems are a courageous move but seems you’re killing it so far 

 

cheers... eh 🇨🇦

 

@Cameron6796 Thanks for the kind words! The bubble tip nem was the most rewarding but most stressful thing to add to the tank so far!

 

I got lucky with the 2021 Texas Snowpocalypse and never lost power but I know people who had no power, heat, and water for days. I am originally from Chicago and well acquainted with sub-zero temperatures. I hope the state has learned from this hard lesson but knowing the political climate here I have very strong doubts anything will change. 

 

 

[DevilDuck]

I have some type of unknown encrusting coral or algae hitchhiking on my sunset montipora frag. I removed a chunk of it when I put the frag in the tank, and it seems to have grown back quite rapidly.

 

It is dark brown has a hard crusty texture and does not have fluorescence under actinic lighting. Any idea what this can be?

 

I'm hoping the monti grows over and smothers whatever it is.

 

[KnH]

Im following along and cycling my rock now, we lost power except for having power twice a day for 15/ 30 minutes

just long enough to warm the house up a bit, I am definitely thinking of getting a small generator 

[DevilDuck]

Larry the Conch thinks my Acans need cleaning.

 

[DevilDuck]

Filling more of the tank in.

 

I went on a little acan kick. Going to try to start an acan garden on the brain coral skeleton rock.

 

 

Also, on an alveopora kick too! New pink goni and red blasto

 

 

Replacement Bubblegum alveopora since my previous frag melted away.

 

 

Added Super Saiyan to the zoa garden rock. Next I think I need something green like Green Eggs and Ham.

 

 

FTS

 

 

[CD_Scapes]

1 hour ago, DevilDuck said:

Filling more of the tank in.

 

I went on a little acan kick. Going to try to start an acan garden on the brain coral skeleton rock.

 

 

Also, on an alveopora kick too! New pink goni and red blasto

 

 

Replacement Bubblegum alveopora since my previous frag melted away.

 

 

Added Super Saiyan to the zoa garden rock. Next I think I need something green like Green Eggs and Ham.

 

 

FTS

 

 

Love seeing other Fluval evos, mine was also a semi stock tank and then I got a Kessil A80 and a Nero 3 😂

[DevilDuck]

I'll be traveling a lot next month and looking into purchasing some more automation, mainly an auto feeder, ATO, and webcam.

My options are much more limited since I am still using the stock lid and light. I'll be documenting and sharing my solutions for them in the next few updates.

 

First off is the auto feeder mount. The stock lid is rounded and has no visible areas to clamp or lay an autofeeder on the market. Problem solved with the Zoe Kissel Auto Feeder mount!

It's basically a platform that hangs from the feeder hole in the stock lid. I did a review on the Zoe Kissel Auto feeder mount for the Fluval Evo with stock lid in the equipment review forum:

 

Zoe Kissel Auto Feeder Mount for Fluval Evo Review

 

The feeder mount was designed for rotating barrel type feeders like the Ehiem EveryDay Fish Feeder. Personally, I find these types of feeders very unaccurate in the amount they feed. Unless you have the very expensive models which are controlled by your aquarium controller, they have limited scheduling. 

 

For trips of 2 weeks or shorter, I prefer the Fish Mate F14. Basically this feeder is a series of 14 small compartments which you can fill with any type of fish food regardless of shape. You can do one type of food or several types, you can leave a compartment empty if you want to skip feeding for that day. You can set it to feed once a day or multiple times a day. I have 3 of these feeders that I use on all my nano tanks. 

 

Amazon.com : Fish Mate F14 Aquarium Fish Feeder : Pet Self Feeders : Pet Supplies

 

 

 

 

[DevilDuck]

I'll be traveling a lot next month and looking into purchasing some more automation, mainly an auto feeder, ATO, and webcam.

My options are much more limited since I am still using the stock lid and light. I'll be documenting and sharing my solutions for them in the next few updates.

 

First off is the auto feeder mount. The stock lid is rounded and has no visible areas to clamp or lay an autofeeder on the market. Problem solved with the Zoe Kissel Auto Feeder mount!

It's basically a platform that hangs from the feeder hole in the stock lid. I did a review on the Zoe Kissel Auto feeder mount for the Fluval Evo with stock lid in the equipment review forum:

 

Zoe Kissel Auto Feeder Mount for Fluval Evo Review

 

The feeder mount was designed for rotating barrel type feeders like the Ehiem EveryDay Fish Feeder. Personally, I find these types of feeders very inaccurate in the amount they feed. Unless you have the very expensive models which are controlled by your aquarium controller, they have limited scheduling. 

 

For trips of 2 weeks or shorter, I prefer the Fish Mate F14. Basically this feeder is a series of 14 small compartments which you can fill with any type of fish food regardless of shape. You can do one type of food or several types, you can leave a compartment empty if you want to skip feeding for that day. You can set it to feed once a day or multiple times a day. I have 3 of these feeders that I use on all my nano tanks. 

 

Amazon.com : Fish Mate F14 Aquarium Fish Feeder : Pet Self Feeders : Pet Supplies

 

 

 

 

[DevilDuck]

Full tank video

 

 

 

[jarviz]

Looks amazing! Is there no coral warfare in your tank tho? alot of those pieces look like they are touching each other.