Robert McCreary
Active Member
ok guys so today I'm going to tell you how I ended up with an established evo 13.5 gallon reef tank and why. so about 18 months ago I got this spontaneous urge to build a reef tank, so ive been hanging around my lfs learning about the do's and don'ts sort of speak.
when I felt I became wealthy in knowledge I started looking online for all of my equipment like the tank ill be using the size and what lights or if ill just go for an all in one system, like the bio cube 30g. once I made up my mind on a 75 g tank and started looking for live rock ($9.99-10.99 lb here) and lights i quickly realized that the wealth in my pocket can not hold up to this ambitious idea. 2 months later I learned about the evo 13.5 gallon and it was on sale for 99$ after adding up everything that I would purchase I learned I was going to save about $300 more than if I ended up buying the biocube not to mention the 75gallon.
when I finally made up my mind I went on craigslist and found this tank listed for 200$ it wasn't worth a dime over my offer, its the evo 13.5 gallon. too me it was a headache and a mess, everything in the tank was stressed and the tank had no flow all because the previous owner didn't know how to clean out the sponge for the stock pump ; it was clogged full of dead mysis shrimp and decaying matter/sand. with that I was glad it came with a protein skimmer and many other extras. when I got it home I did water tests, the salinity was at 1.034 measured with a refractometer, the nitrates was through the roof, everything else was good. btw API master kits are notorious for high nitrates please correct me if I'm wrong.
during the move I didn't even think about removing the sand from the tank. the rocks were placed in one bucket and I ended up placing the live stock in their own Tupperware containers. when I got home the two ocellaris clowns and my one royal gramma didn't look to good so I skipped the whole scrub down of the tank.In theory to minimize stress I placed the aquascape right back where I found it. the kenya tree coral had a ruff life being at the very top of the tank and all, still it managed to spread 4-6 little corals and continued to prune itself back every other week or so. most likely from stress.... the pink white tip hammer coral never fully opened for about 2 days, now the green zoas and hammer are doing great. anyways I'm done typing;
let me break everything down for you guys
the craigslist deal
evo13.5 tank
aquaticslife 115 protein skimmer
three medium-large live rocks
2 larg colonies of yellow polyps
2 ocellaris clowns
1 royal gramma
2 maybe 3 hermits
1 emerald crab
3 snails no id
1 large cleaner shrimp {Lysmata amboinensis}
a colony of kenya trees
2 green button polyp frags
unknown coral
chemiclean algae control powder
a white tip/pink hammer?
2 5 gallon buckets
a heater
and all of the usual, glass scrapers and stuff
didn't come with fish food idk what she was feeding them other than mysis
what I bought for the tank
salt- IO reef salt
a 5g heater
fish&coral food>saki-hikari pellets&
hikari coralific delite
6 nassarius snails
1 Meteor Shower Cyphastrea Coral
1 small colony of zoa
a leather
refractometer
water test kit
that's pretty much it, I do keep natural ocean water from petco for emergencies
oh yess I almost forgot I also picked up a speckled red BTA for about 5$ on black Friday he is the size of a nickel and it is a positive id.
when I felt I became wealthy in knowledge I started looking online for all of my equipment like the tank ill be using the size and what lights or if ill just go for an all in one system, like the bio cube 30g. once I made up my mind on a 75 g tank and started looking for live rock ($9.99-10.99 lb here) and lights i quickly realized that the wealth in my pocket can not hold up to this ambitious idea. 2 months later I learned about the evo 13.5 gallon and it was on sale for 99$ after adding up everything that I would purchase I learned I was going to save about $300 more than if I ended up buying the biocube not to mention the 75gallon.
when I finally made up my mind I went on craigslist and found this tank listed for 200$ it wasn't worth a dime over my offer, its the evo 13.5 gallon. too me it was a headache and a mess, everything in the tank was stressed and the tank had no flow all because the previous owner didn't know how to clean out the sponge for the stock pump ; it was clogged full of dead mysis shrimp and decaying matter/sand. with that I was glad it came with a protein skimmer and many other extras. when I got it home I did water tests, the salinity was at 1.034 measured with a refractometer, the nitrates was through the roof, everything else was good. btw API master kits are notorious for high nitrates please correct me if I'm wrong.
during the move I didn't even think about removing the sand from the tank. the rocks were placed in one bucket and I ended up placing the live stock in their own Tupperware containers. when I got home the two ocellaris clowns and my one royal gramma didn't look to good so I skipped the whole scrub down of the tank.In theory to minimize stress I placed the aquascape right back where I found it. the kenya tree coral had a ruff life being at the very top of the tank and all, still it managed to spread 4-6 little corals and continued to prune itself back every other week or so. most likely from stress.... the pink white tip hammer coral never fully opened for about 2 days, now the green zoas and hammer are doing great. anyways I'm done typing;
let me break everything down for you guys
the craigslist deal
evo13.5 tank
aquaticslife 115 protein skimmer
three medium-large live rocks
2 larg colonies of yellow polyps
2 ocellaris clowns
1 royal gramma
2 maybe 3 hermits
1 emerald crab
3 snails no id
1 large cleaner shrimp {Lysmata amboinensis}
a colony of kenya trees
2 green button polyp frags
unknown coral
chemiclean algae control powder
a white tip/pink hammer?
2 5 gallon buckets
a heater
and all of the usual, glass scrapers and stuff
didn't come with fish food idk what she was feeding them other than mysis
what I bought for the tank
salt- IO reef salt
a 5g heater
fish&coral food>saki-hikari pellets&
hikari coralific delite
6 nassarius snails
1 Meteor Shower Cyphastrea Coral
1 small colony of zoa
a leather
refractometer
water test kit
that's pretty much it, I do keep natural ocean water from petco for emergencies
oh yess I almost forgot I also picked up a speckled red BTA for about 5$ on black Friday he is the size of a nickel and it is a positive id.
Last edited:
