The Best Reef in Australia - Evan Luo's Glorious SPS Aquarium

real quick announcement before we get into this fantastic reef tank is about one month from the upload of this video August 11 and 12 we're gonna be hosting the first ever reef stock in Sydney Australia so we're really excited to bring this american-style Reef Aquarium conference to Australia for the first time we've done it for over 10 years in America and it's a really a lot of fun from coral fraggers the collectors manufacturers raffles and speakers give me so many ways to learn a lot about your reef tank pick up some goodies and meet some fun folks so be sure to check out reef stock show for more information and RSVP to the Facebook event page so enjoy the video of evans tank and we'll see you guys in sydney [Music] what's up reef builders Jake Adams here and I am on the north side of Sydney and Hornsby Hornsby at the tank of Evan what's your last name Lou oh you are Evan Luo and this tank is an absolute masterpiece it's very original tank a very creative layout of corals a very interesting setup of equipment but before we show you that we're gonna walk around the front and present the tank in all its glory so this is the fantastic reef display of Evan Lua and if you're wondering if it looks as good in real life as a dozen video I can promise you that it does and one thing that really grabs my attention right away is how little rock there is in the bottom third of the aquarium so Evans really been aiming to do what he calls a lifted aquascape that he says is inspired from some Asian style reef keeping is that right Evan let's get you the frame it's on between the frame and present your tank and so tell us a little bit about your reef tank what's the size I'm going to be had it and etc so this tank for about a year now it's an equal tank it's a six by two and a half by two and a half I it's about 350 gallons around that and yeah as you can see it's mostly SPS odd crawls I think once the sks vs bug bites you yeah you know it's not just SPS though you definitely have like a dominant tank dominated by Acropora right yeah dude this is him head shoulder to shoulder with Sade oh she's saying that I know you saw earlier this year and a lot of other people have seen but man this is pretty much about as good as it gets and one of the reason for that is as I was describing just the uncompromising conditions for corals because you have a ton of light on this tank yeah tell us how much like you have on the tank sorry we can open this off go ahead so I've called t5 mainly in the middle 881 and I think I've got eight Kissel's so eight Kessel's just like it's got spotlighting you know normally people would have like one or two these small lights just to highlight some of their corals but you have eight of them yeah them just rigged all around the aquarium and then to finish it off we got our Radeon and the Radeon g4 bro and I think we calculated earlier somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 ish Watts 1200 you watch about that dimension very cool and while we're doing the technical details can you just tell me what pumps you have inside the tank I'm running 3 MP 40s I've got a quiet driver over there I think I've got two old ones I've got those Asian pumps there's J bow ones that's a big one and there's small one and I've gotten every 10 and it just got a random MP 10 just to create more animals yeah I think the more little ones you put in there and you shouldn't run your wave makers in my opinion too high run a more low ISO then you get more of a mixture of flow very cool just man what are you returning the fluid I'm running a Vectra leaving on everyone the main one is small one and it seems to do the job so we're cool I think let this down now so how long is this tank been set up it's been set up for about a year now from the origin of putting tank into about now it's being about a yeah yeah right I need you that you have the aim of doing this lifted aquascape from the beginning yeah I had the intention right from the start to figure out what I wanted like this is almost exactly where I wanted it to be I went to lift all the corals off so they're as close as you can to the line and yeah I did my whole scape initially to make that happen with these ridges and these underpasses that are really out there like that well brother man like this is so well executed you know you just have like three comparatively tiny rocks down on the bottom and just pretty much like nothing but open space underneath and so you know all the abundant water flow that you provide doesn't get impeded anywhere it definitely helps it just bounces around and man the color of the corals is really really top-notch and I know a lot of the viewers are gonna appreciate the fact that you have balanced color you have balanced color and your reef tank it's not totally trippy it's not completely blue doubt but really really great rendition and that's got to come from the combination of the LEDs and the t5 lighting yeah definitely definitely the t5 and LED is I think the best with the shimmer and then you put the t5 with the hole coverage it's the light [Music] [Music] so evan is no doubt you have a masterpiece reef tank before we take a closer look at some of the kind of the standout coral pieces let's go around the back you've got a dedicated fish room young and I know people want to see how this works okay let's take a look insert funk music here on the corner okay so here's a look at the tank edge on so you can get a feel for just how much technology is happening in this aquarium and now we'll enter the fish room completely now you can hear the hum you can hear the mom of the reef tank so give up readers of viewers another look here at the lighting of the ATI 85 fixture the high output bulbs I think those are 5 foot bulbs and just a battery of castles alright so we talked about lighting we talked about the water flow tell me about your filtration and your dosage and your water changes because your your real stickler for all those parameters aren't you let's see what every kid you see a bit man yeah we'll go from that slide so obviously it runs into some filter wall that I find that helps a lot filter wool so a mechanical filter the world I'm running some carbon just hanging off like that yeah super high-tech yep in a reactor and I've got a piece of 250 row exclusive very nice you know it's the first time I've actually seen that titanium intake yeah from them last time I had a to pump and Oly Oly snail shells go inside oh yeah super important to protect all your intakes trainers all your pumps from any errant snails and stoma towels and things like that yeah then you get the Z of it reactor yeah so it's like a cheap Chinese ZB reactive with some macro force turns in there with as much as I can put in there don't have to be an expert to just make a little plunger device so I'm Nikki lo sabzi of it new things inside if oh I think it's probably four kilos all right now that can you change it depending on how I feel okay okay I borrow every two months three months maybe and there's the return vector of M one right there do you run it at full intensity I run it at I'll say 90% and we're just gonna say hi to the peanut gallery here is mica Mac Mac Mac hey Mac what's going on he doesn't wanna be left out of the video they include the pets all right so tell me about these dosing pumps because you know in the United States we use primarily like a four channel a three channel although one doser but in Australia use these uh these John Len individual pumps right um we're pretty well they're really easy to use I just set the amount you dude and our you wanted me every time the dose and then you just go ahead and do that yeah so I recently sent one of these up for my kalkwasser dozer that I was telling you about and here's your super fancy dosing container super fancy really goes with the tank yep it's all there right now they're all empty because I'm gonna make some oats and first of all as you can see that water buckets are there and so I see that you know your dosing calcium your dosing buffer but you and you're really like a days ago about those but then you have like a really crazy regime dosing all the juices and the goodies from zeovit and a little bit from aqua forest let me see your calendar sure let's show the people the calendar have to see these Chinese calendars that you get every year from you from your relatives so this is a breakdown of what I dose every day so you take do you take notes after you dosed yes so I do something I write down but usually after every Wednesday's the same thing okay every Thursday's the same thing and if I notice something different in the coral say they go more Brown I'll funnel back on the dose or if they go lighter I'll increase to those just depends so tell me about your water change regime what do you use how much you change and how often so what changes okay for this right now this is connected right now that standard 50 gallon drum yeah 222 though not much that is in America what just called fitty yeah and then tell me about the salt you're using so I use this natural sea salt that ultimately are an Australian party they pretty much developed it for me so what's really interesting is like you know a lot of people think that more is more and there's a lot of salts going around us enriched and higher levels of this net but you didn't like it why well first thought is they had a different line of salt that was it was called something else but the alkalinity and the calcium and all the levels were slightly elevated and so if I'm gonna do SPS it didn't really help that so I said hey can you can you make a salt for me that that doesn't more natural seawater level he said yeah right hidden and so that's when we got now very good so as you're taking natural seawater level I would say sir that's what I'm trying to aim for so I'm like super perplexed because you know we were going through all his dosages all his additives all those elements but he can't seem to recall dosing magnesium ever somehow but there's got to be some magnesium in there like for example you know this volume of water was just added to the tank is that his love is overflowing from the aquarium and so this is a new satellite tank that is going to help - I guess catch some some of the extras in here hmm great cool anything else you want to say about husbandry before we just got a geek out or some of the animals husbandry well there's one thing I always do and there's trying not to put your hands in the tank that's honestly my first rule just try to keep everything let everything do its thing and try to not move everything out and change everything all the time if there's any one thing I could say that's probably though that's super cool I usually save it for the end of the video but I like to get like one pro tip from everyone I visit everybody's got something different to say and that's something that you and I share you know and we discussed like looking at the tank thinking about what you want to do and then when you do it when you put your hand in the tank then you go for it and then you make all the changes you want to get week and then then you stay out of it for 30 weeks so this is actually kind of a rare sight for Australia as a frog Rock and France and Western refers in them in America and Europe will think that I maybe am kidding but frogs are really not that common here in Australia yeah they're not they're not too common because obviously we're right next to the reef and so we've been collecting what reef is that for some people who don't know that's a Great Barrier Reef there's also one in WOA on the other side on the west side and Engler and there's also an almond tree but we have we have we're privileged to have a lot of girls in Australia all right what's refreshing about your tank it's seeing so many large colleagues you know and you know what I was talking about the uncompromising conditions for corals you know it comes to this this aquascape that is built to have a fantastic population of corals and a was a metric load just so much light coming in from every angle these corals are definitely not hurting for light and you even have corals on top of you trend look I won today he's a frag on top of a of a coral right there and I was trying to really bust this ball about using epoxy to proxy live coral to a live coral but he had a really good explanation for that well you know that live reef that's how I work you see he'll he need some Fasil pores and the line in the wild and will die the new calls coming form in yeah I think that's it's naturally I know but instead of putting that this the tissue against tissue you were saying that they can in cross that piece Heather and training a little bit of very odd because everyone coming to this party ends first so you tried this before yeah I've tried to run for and they just thought of fighting it didn't yeah yeah so yes here's another example of a quarrel on top of a coral right they're like literally just resting on top of stock they're all clones that I'm guessing misses one also yeah and they're right there this is the egregious one I can't even I can't even process are just like literally a colony set on top of an ice colony and very very cool so you clearly have like way more than too many corals for us to you know go discuss and to describe around the back I love that you still have a great selection if you feel like it's you know it's pretty common here in Australia you have a great access to you feel is there's a beautiful childhood scroll right here that you said you're given it's kind of a a random specimen lots of tender sticking around but really the animal back here that I want to focus on is this this blue gigantea a carpet and emiti so our viewers they might be familiar with carpet Andamanese but they might not realize that there's three different species and this is the one with the long long tentacle so tell me about your quest to get a uh a long tentacle carpet anemone especially a blue one well for starters my wife nui kick me out of the house to chuck you know what in the first place how much you would come but yeah in australia a bit quite they're quite rare what's the sticker price on hung one like that I've seen them go for about four thousand dollars maybe Australian yes you're still talking about Freight 30 to 30 300 USD so yeah I mean this is this is a spectacular spectacular reef animal I don't think I've ever seen one in America but I saw one at Eastwood aquarium last time I was here and that really took my breath away and yours is like I don't know four times bigger a really really freaking blue yeah just really really nice very cool well let's uh swing around the front and just take a look at some of the highlights specimens that you have in the tank so let's start on the right side yeah what are you some of your favorite corals over here say this one I'm not too sure of names but this blue one here it's very dear to me because I've burned it out from very small only the size of pinky I love how you give that one a little extra respect you don't have any holes on top of it and you're amazing except for that one that's just like Serena progressing it's just it looks like you put a coral Jenny favorites over here I just mean oh the selection of pinks and greens blues it's just really nice I'll tell you what when I got that green hairy one it was as hairy as that and I've never seen something that hairy so I just had to take it it looks like a milli just some reason doesn't have really well-developed axial or vice and then this is like a peach shortcake right here this really looks like the same shape as a strawberry shortcake but really really ultra paint I got given that from a tank shut down and this person had to have this call for a very long time so yeah wherever they were collecting before that five six seven years ago they clearly don't like there anymore and so now I'm looking at some of the collectors don't go anymore so it's definitely something unique I haven't seen one in Australia but this is one of the primary like first mommy's and then we're going to go over to the second one okay so now we're moving on to the main central balmy you've got a nice beautiful pink table right there and the whole thing is capped off by some really really nice tag horns so tell us about a couple of corals you have in this pommy so I really like this one that purple one right things called a sea realice I believe and that was given to me by a local Ruffo and he said you know even have a go of this and it's turned out to be absolutely amazing it's got really nice purple tips it's called these weird kind of girth pads daughter and say yeah you know it's weird it's like I don't know how common this is in Australia this is a really common core from speech hmm and normally doesn't get like as much light as it deserves and it won't grow that tidy and it won't be that bright so yeah that is definitely like one of the most attractive specimens or long-term captives I've ever seen and I really love this guy right here with like the tubular tubular branches really weird I think that's a wild artifact like not how the coral grows can you tell me about that one that one's from a tank shut down as well and I've no idea what that is but my friends always come over and they say the color doesn't look that bright my said wait you'll get better with time you'll get better with time so you are like the coral rescuer right yeah a lot of corals from tank shutdowns yeah everything seen in Sydney I think it's very nice that's really great because someone might not be doing so well with the Carlile notice to be able I give it to them and it's very cool look at the shag eNOS on this mill I think it's just totally just like that's a shaggy as they get you know he's a gear and you wouldn't be able to tell what it is anymore it almost spills into branches and then then of course you got a beautiful staghorn out there really really nice purple pillow shape dude up on the top have you had that one-on-one time yet here you're coming from out there remember down but it is about half that size and you can probably see from that top area top section are you growing all those purple little branches that's all new as you can see it's growing into the stag and everything and then you have a few short cakes here like you know this is this is kind of your classic strawberry shortcake here green with some pink accents this is a weirdo one that's just you know kind of pink all over this one is like the cutest strawberry shortcake have ever seen that one that's if I wanted to Fraga something that's a take home how long have you had that girl uh he was probably one of the first girls by guarding this tank he wasn't there at the start he was just probably somewhere here but he kept on falling over so I found probably nine months say about that yeah very cool another staghorn just kind of erupts from the middle and you can see how though some corals are just kind of half as early placed on top of each other and you know what it works especially Actos you know super not super aggressive with each other and then here definitely last but not least is a really really really nice pearl Barry style micro you've had that one for a bit right yeah I've had it didn't come in looking like that it came in actually looking quite maybe if you could call it blue blue blue brown maybe but ever since it's been on that high light it's it's called up really well it's always changing it's always looking real great it's probably one of my favorite corals in the tank very cool so this think you know it is dominated by a Crow's but there's a really really nice toxic green hammer coil right there and a really cool sparkly Gani this is one of those again like it's a harder to frag but this is one that I would be longing for some assorted zoanthids there on the bottom and but I really want to bring attention it's just like super duper shaggy Duncan right here no Duncan is like the quintessential Australian coral so it's really cool to see that yo you vocals still really appreciate love this coral man I don't I really don't think I've ever seen one quite as shaggy so--even man it's been a real treat and absolutely pleasure to see your reef tank you know to me this is the epitome about what reef tanks are about growing large showy corals and you know frags is where you start but for me this is the culmination of what a reef tanks should be so you've clearly got the touch can you tell our viewers you know just some of your personal crystal philosophies about how you keep your reef tank and just some tips that people can carry through after they watch this video the way I see briefing it's like pushing a really heavy bulb yeah it takes a lot to get going but once it's going it's actually quite easy to maintain that boat but I guess if you if you do too many things in one go or if you need to change too many parameters things go a bit funky so if there's anything I would say is steady as she goes steady as she goes and try to try to do everything incrementally watch the tank we all know I think putting your hands in the tank do less of that try to try to make it try to make a plan to see what you want to do figure all that out and do it all in one go instead of trying to place a call here and know I can't place it over there so just leave it be let it very cool well you know I'm in Australia for a little while but if I see any other home display reef tanks they're gonna have some really big shoes to fill so it I can't thank you enough for have me over mate Nan's so if you guys liked this video go ahead and give it a thumbs up if you like videos like this you'll learn more about reef ting and see more inspiring reef aquariums like Evan Lewis reef tank please go ahead and subscribe evan is a watcher as a subscriber to the channel and so he will be happy to answer your questions in the comments down below so I hope you guys enjoy this video and until next time I will catch you on the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Reef Builders

Views: 900,795

Rating: 4.8920398 out of 5

Keywords: sps coral, reef tank, reef aquarium, saltwater aquarium, aquarium, marine fish, live corals, coral frag, australia, sydney, sydney aquarium, australian reef

Id: ZFuSvPrIGxA

Length: 25min 8sec (1508 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018