Zach's Aqueon Evolve 8 Reef Build

[Huffers]

Hello everyone! Due to getting some inspiration from others on here setting up their new aqueon reefs I've decided to set one up myself! It's been a while since I've set up a brand new tank so I'm pretty excited. I decided to go with the 8 gallon so I could temporarily house my clownfish until I set up my bigger tank. Some of you know that I recently sold my 10 gallon tank in preparation of setting up my first big reef tank. Prolly will do a 55 gallon reef but that will come later. My goals for this 8 gallon will be to set up a tank to house the few zoas I wanted to keep out of my 10 gallon. Once my bigger tank gets set up I plan on using this 8 gallon nano as my frag tank. Anyways.... Just got the tank this morning. Got 6 pounds of dry reef rock and will seed it with live rock leftover from my 10 gallon. Also went will a different substrate this time: pure white aragonite sand. Normally I use crushed coral but that stuff has been known to harbor a lot of excess nutrients. I don't think I'll have to cycle this tank very much as a lot of the saltwater and bacteria I'm transferring over from my 10 gallon. Here's a picture so far. I think I'm going to wait to see if this stock light is capable of opening my zoas before I look at trying to replace it. Let me know what you guys think!

 

[obscurereef]

Awesome small aquarium! Love the clean design and LEDs. If the stock lights don't work will you be going with LED still? Looking forward to the progress of the tank.

 

[Convict2161]

Nice! Following along...

 

[CleverBs]

the stock light does not allow Zoas to do well

I put a little group of them in mine with the light on and they never opened. you can put a great light on it for under $100 that will grow anything you want.

Glad you decided to get one! I love mine and with the new light im even more thrilled about the tank. get the Aqueon Nano glass magnet cleaner, theres one for curved glass and is basicly made for the evolve it works perfectly and they are like 8$ and they are small so you dont even notice them in the tank.

 

[Huffers]

Ok here's an update. I love the fact that this tank has a behind the scenes sump built in. I went ahead and filled the bottom portion with chaeto algae and live rock and the underwater 10 watt light to keep it lit 24/7. (Thanks convict!) in effect this will create a nice little refugium. On top off that I added my chemi-pure elite. The spill over then dumps into the 2nd compartment where my heater and return pump is located. Ill be adding my corals and fish Tom morning. Here's a few pics to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

 

[obscurereef]

Wow did it really cycle that fast? The underwater lighting is epic!

 

[scottayy]

cool i'll follow along, i'm doing a 4 gallon aqueon evolve build

I emailed aqueon about the lights. They sent me an image with information about the lights. The information didn't have a color temperature rating, but I know all of the LED's totaled to about 2 watts. Since the 8 gallon light has double the 4 gallon lights I would assume you have almost 4 watts of light. So these stock LED's aren't very powerful.

 

[Huffers]

I used water and rock from another established system so I highly doubt I will have much ( if any) cycle period. And yea Scottayy I figured I would have to replace the lighting eventually. I'm hoping I can get by for a couple weeks with the stock light to give me time to find a replacement.

 

[Ibrahim]

Nice build. I see you got tufa rock. It's really porous. A tip is to chisel it into smaller pieces so it's easier to scape with.

 

[Huffers]

Yea I really don't have a great supplier for live rock around here and I didn't wana order some for just an 8 gallon so I used tufa rock and seeded with a couple small pieces of live rock from another tank. Got all of my corals in now and my clownfish. Things are starting to look real good. It's been a lot of work to get this small tank set up in such quick fashion but its been worth it. Here's some pics.

 

[CleverBs]

Yea I really don't have a great supplier for live rock around here and I didn't wana order some for just an 8 gallon so I used tufa rock and seeded with a couple small pieces of live rock from another tank. Got all of my corals in now and my clownfish. Things are starting to look real good. It's been a lot of work to get this small tank set up in such quick fashion but its been worth it. Here's some pics.

Looking good but you better get a light soon or you are going to have some sad sad corals make sure you watch the temp on them. Mine suddenly is at 84 all the time so I need a fan to cool the water.

 

[Huffers]

Yea my temp sits right at 80 degrees. The light I have to feed my macro algae in the back adds enough heat so I took my heater out. I'm thinking that my temp will go back down into the 70's with that move. So far that light has opened up all my corals so its prolly not that bad. I'm def gona upgrade the light though. Ill start looking at my opinions next week.

 

[scottayy]

Heating's gonna be an issue for me. Well, cooling I mean.

 

[Huffers]

Why is y'all's tanks getting so warm? Mines getting a little warm but nothing over 80 degrees

 

[scottayy]

For me, it's ambient temp is always higher than 80.

 

[CleverBs]

my tank is next to a window and has a par38 7'' from the water, I now have a fan that keeps the tank right at 79

 

[Huffers]

Well I still haven't had any temperature issues so maybe I lucked out here. I ordered a new light fixture today from Beamworks LED's. I've never been a big fan of the par 38 bulbs so I decided to go the LED route. Ill post some pics when it comes in the mail. So far everything else is doing ok. Corals and fish seem good so once my light comes in ill consider this build project complete.

 

[all4wheels2]

I don't have temperature issues with mine either. Mine stays at 80, which is where I want it. I used an Aqueon mini heater - I think it's 10w. I like the stock light, but I only have a mantis shrimp in mine. I might end up putting the ecoxotic ecopico led light on it later. Good luck with yours and have fun

 

[scottayy]

I have a par38 too. It looks good.

 

[Huffers]

Well my new light fixture came in the mail this morning and its PERFECT for this tank. It's made by Beamworks and uses 9 LED bulbs that produce 1 watt of light each. 6 of those bulbs produce 10,000k daylight while the other 3 produce 460nm actinic light. Altogether it only cost me $30 bucks on eBay and like I said I think it's gona work out perfect for this tank. Here's some pics.