IM INT 100 Gallon Build

[TeeSquared1214]

Finally took the leap and purchased an aquarium that I believed was worthy of a reef tank that I’d be proud of. I purchased the Innovative Marine 100 gallon Internal Overflow Complete Reef System (link below).

It took exactly one week from purchase to arrive into my garage as it was recently listed as “in stock”. I could have went with a made to order one and saved a good chunk of money, but this would require 4-6 months of waiting, and simply wouldn’t fit reasonably in any space I have without looking like an eye sore.

The initial plan was to have two of these aquariums. One would be my reef tank, the other would be an upgrade for my planted freshwater setup. One on each side of the TV stand, however upon seeing the size, my significant other let me down gently that it would not be a good idea, would look too crowded, and one of them being near a corner to a hallway would be asking for eventual damage to it. All good points.

However since I only am getting one of these aquariums (for the foreseeable future). This one will definitely be the reef tank. I chose the size despite this being my first saltwater setup because of several factors.

1.) More water volume = more room for error
2.) More room for error = less maintenance (potentially)
3.) More stocking options
4.) Larger view, potentially better at a distance than smaller.

Alright, enough rambling and onto the setup!

Package Arrived!

Setting the Stand up! (Someone on Reddit put the logo on the bottom…the instructions aren’t the greatest..)

Placed the completed stand!

Got the sump and the aquarium placed. (with the help of 3 neighbors to move it)

Did the plumbing for the sump…again not the best instructions. But patience and critical thinking helped out here!

Now time to do a leak test, and fill with sand. I have no idea what I’m going to do for my rock/scape. So any ideas are greatly appreciated.


Link to aquarium with complete reef system:

Shop | Innovative Marine Products

Shop Now | Innovative Marine's Official Store | Free Shipping on all orders* | NUVO aquariums and saltwater reef supplies.

www.innovative-marine.com

 

[Extremeengineer]

Nice, I really like their kits. The stands are great, I prefer an extruded stand to wood. Tenecor and IM are the short list for my larger tank progression.

Scape is so personal. I went with Live Rock from 2 LFS, and Dinkins, so I didn’t prebuild dry. I wanted lots of caves, so I fit things together in the tank wet until I was happy. I really considered Ocean LR, but in the end I chose the “know what you are putting in” path, and as a beginner I am happy with my choice. I would really like to do my next tank with Aussie live rock, but I’m finding it hard to get medical leave to sell a kidney in a third world country.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

Nice, I really like their kits. The stands are great, I prefer an extruded stand to wood. Tenecor and IM are the short list for my larger tank progression.

Scape is so personal. I went with Live Rock from 2 LFS, and Dinkins, so I didn’t prebuild dry. I wanted lots of caves, so I fit things together in the tank wet until I was happy. I really considered Ocean LR, but in the end I chose the “know what you are putting in” path, and as a beginner I am happy with my choice. I would really like to do my next tank with Aussie live rock, but I’m finding it hard to get medical leave to sell a kidney in a third world country.

I’ve been digging around at the different live rock options out there, and it can get pretty pricey, and even requiring a decent waiting period to even get them. However I feel the benefit of live rock far outweighs the negatives (potential hitchhikers). Do you have any recommendations on lighting? I was looking at Kessil but that’s a steep investment so trying to determine if it’s really worth it starting off.

 

[Spare time]

I’ve been digging around at the different live rock options out there, and it can get pretty pricey, and even requiring a decent waiting period to even get them. However I feel the benefit of live rock far outweighs the negatives (potential hitchhikers). Do you have any recommendations on lighting? I was looking at Kessil but that’s a steep investment so trying to determine if it’s really worth it starting off.

Kessils are beautiful. I have two a80s over my im15 in the pics below. You can hybridize them with an led bar too if you'd like.



As for rock, you can do something like bommie reef rock to get a balance between live and dry since their pest-free rock is covered with coralline.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

Kessils are beautiful. I have two a80s over my im15. You can hybridize them with a led bar too if you'd like.

I just recently found out about hybrid setups. How does that work, especially from an aesthetic standpoint?

 

[Spare time]

I just recently found out about hybrid setups. How does that work, especially from an aesthetic standpoint?

The led bar would dampen the shimmer and fill out spots between the kessils.

 

[Spare time]

Here's my little innovative marine tank

 

[kevgib67]

Great looking setup! I’m looking forward to seeing some life in it. Smart to go with the live rock!

 

[Spare time]

Great looking setup! I’m looking forward to seeing some life in it. Smart to go with the live rock!

My tank was live rock from an lfs that was grown in a bin. I typically don't recommend lfs live rock but this tank is so small that any issues would be easy to deal with.

 

[Spare time]

Great looking setup! I’m looking forward to seeing some life in it. Smart to go with the live rock!

It's in my labs office space. A nice little distraction from writing papers and grants lol

 

[kevgib67]

My tank was live rock from an lfs that was grown in a bin. I typically don't recommend lfs live rock but this tank is so small that any issues would be easy to deal with.

My current live rock is from a dentist friend of mine’s fowler sump. Been in there for decades, plenty of bacteria but none of the fun stuff I would get on the live rock back in the mid nineties.

 

[Spare time]

My current live rock is from a dentist friend of mine’s fowler sump. Been in there for decades, plenty of bacteria but none of the fun stuff I would get on the live rock back in the mid nineties.

You can still order live ocean rock.

 

[BristleWormHater]

Nice tank! That will probably be my first new tank once I get my own house. Right now I have their 25 gallon tank

 

[kevgib67]

You can still order live ocean rock.

Ya I would have preferred but when I told him I was setting up another tank he insisted on giving me his rock. For sixteen years I gave him coral frags.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

UPDATE!!

Finally was able to take the time to mix my saltwater. Used my BRS 75gpd RODI system so it took about 2 days of casually filling a 44 gallon trash can with the RODI water. I used what many recommended in other forums, the BRUTE one which is made of food safe materials. I started off using a 50 gallon rated Fluval sea circulation pump to mix with a spare heater I had but decided it may be better to use the pump the aquarium came with to make sure salt wasn’t just sitting at the bottom.

RODI setup in our guest bathroom, near the aquarium.

44 Gallon Trash Can for Mixing

Measured the mixture at 1.023-1.026 gravity/PPT using a hydrometer I bought.

Was able to shimmy the trash can at 75% full about 30 feet maybe less to the tank. Hooked up a tube to transfer the water into the aquarium. So roughly 30 gallons at a time, taking about 4 trips total to include the water in the sump.

Once water started getting in the overflow. I noticed that the return line bulkhead and the secondary drain line wasn’t sealed properly causing a small drip. No big deal as I was able to tighten it further with no future leaks from those.

With a little bit of water in, I decided to go to my LFS and acquire some live rock and aquascaping cement. I ended up with 54lbs of live rock. This cost me about $6/lb for regular rock, and $8/lb for the premium coraline colored rock.

I had the two heaters in to ensure it held temp while I filled it with more water. Not sure it entirely matters. I was able to pick the rocks myself from their selection tub filled with water. So I’m pretty happy with the ones I got. But they don’t seem to be “live” as they could be. They seem pretty clean but hopefully have that biodiversity deeper in the rock.

Depending on how I do the scape will determine if I need to go back and get more live rock/dry rock as spaced out it seems good. But after playing around with some scapes it seemed about half empty.

Moving the rocks around made it cloudy and hard to take pictures with. The last one is my favorite since I’m trying to go for a scape that leaves some good cover/arches for fish, while still providing flat area for corals and separated structures for the corals that may need them. Still toying around with the ideas and looking for inspiration.

Yesterday happened to be the day things leaked though….although, this was all my fault…

I stayed up til 3am doing some adjusting to the sump and return pump. And when I initially setup the return pump, I didn’t think I needed to cut the plastic tubing that fed the return line the water from the pump. Well over the course of that night and that day, the S shape bend in that tube, combined with the pump water pressure gradually loosened the tubing.

Luckily this happened while I was 10 minutes from home. I had left work early to pick up dinner and was 10 minutes out on the phone with my wife. Luckily she was near the aquarium, and suddenly starting hearing “the gurgling”. I had her take pictures and asked her questions about the drains. She then opened up the stand, and that’s when our very own recreation of a Yellowstone National Park geyser was in our living room!

How did that happen you might ask since the sump is enclosed.

True and while the lid is light enough to be blasted off, the pumps nozzle was perfectly placed under the thumb hole cutout of the acrylic lid for the return pump section, leaving the lid perfectly in place while able to spew water. Thankfully when this happened my wife was able to remain calm and listen to my instructions to prevent much water from coming out. Had I not been off work or she had been upstairs we would have a mess on our hands. To prevent any damage to my floor and ultimately the aquarium. I had to remove the sump and get all the excess water out from under the stand. Lesson in hydrodynamics learned!

Picture to commemorate my education in hydrodynamics!!

With that settled and back into place, I’m currently playing around with scape ideas until I either find one I like or decide I need more rock.

I have 100lbs of sand on stand by for when that decision is made.

About 40lbs of sand is the Carib Sea aragalive sand, while the other 60 is the special grade aragonite sand. I plan to mix both together for a density that isn’t too light but just right and ideal for any sand sifters or burrowers I decide to get.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

For stocking ideas I’ve come up with the following. I’m unsure in which order to get them but will be doing research and taking advice to determine this.

I also need to acquire a light, however the Kessil AP9X caught my eye and would be the perfect addition….my wallet, and my wife…. Won’t be pleased.

Stocking List:
Clownfish Pair
Royal Gramma
Some Type of Bristletooth Tang
Reef Safe Wrasse of sorts (Fairy/Six Line?)
Goby (Engineer/Watchman/Tiger/Yasha?)
Firefish
Blenny, unsure of type.

If I have enough room, after doing some research too, maybe a flame Angel, hawkfish, and/or a foxfish.

I would like the black storm clowns and a coral beauty but my thoughts on that are below.

Clownfish Pair (Black Storm but saw they were $120/ea, is that normal pricing or high end for a clown?)

Coral Beauty despite the potential for nipping corals. I just love the color of this fish, but if it truly does nip it’ll have to go. So I may go against this.

I would really love a tang with yellow color. But it doesn’t seem to be feasible given the size of my current setup. It seems that only really the Bristletooth/Tomini variety are suited for this size. I don’t want to have to eventually rehome a tang that gets too big. Too much stress on the fish, and on me to go out of my way to do it haha.

Other random fish ideas/additions. Again all depending on compatibility, care, and their requirements.

Threadfin butterfly
Orchid dottyback
Mandarin Dragonette

Inverts Stocking List:
(These are just ones I found cool, but will do more research on compatibility and their care requirements) someone also mentioned to me that pistol/snapping shrimp can break glass? Is this really a concern?

Bristle sea star
emerald crab, porcelain crab, acropora crab
Campfire feather duster
Flame scallop
Penderson cleaner shrimp
Tiger snapping shrimp
Blood red fire shrimp
Cleaner shrimp
Lettuce sea slug
Deresa clam
Electric blue hermit
Pincushion urchin

For corals, the only one I know I want right now is a green star polyp. I just like the green, and how they flow. Still doing more research and definitely open to suggestions for some softies or some very beginner friendly hard corals.

 

[LiquidSpace]

Very nice! I have a 200 INT cycling. How did you setup your return? It looks like yours came with hard plumbing. Mine came with a barb attachment for soft tubing but the instructions look like it should have been setup with a normal bulkhead.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

Very nice! I have a 200 INT cycling. How did you setup your return? It looks like yours came with hard plumbing. Mine came with a barb attachment for soft tubing but the instructions look like it should have been setup with a normal bulkhead.

The return is hard plumbing, but the immediate connection between the pump and the hard plumbing is a soft rubber tubing to connect to a barb.

 

[TeeSquared1214]

Scape and Sand update!

Slowly but surely getting everything set up the way I like it.

After doing a lot of research on how people typically aquascape live rock I decided to go with the EMarco 400 cement. The process was pretty straightforward however unlike other reefers on this forum and others, I didn’t experience success with using it. This is likely due to user error and maybe due to the amount I was trying to add to make it a structural piece of my scape as opposed to a binding material. Not only this, but I tried applying it to areas and crevices that weren’t necessarily flat surface to surface contact. After doing a little more research I decided the next step would be to try super glue gel. Many posts have stated the gel was easier to work with and would be reef safe as long as it was made with Cyanoacrylate.

EMarco Cement Attempt

With this in mind, I started playing around with some scapes, chiseling away at rocks and finally gluing pieces together. I initially did this with a framing hammer and wood chisels, which I would not recommend unless you want to damage your tools and have a harder go at it. I did one or two rocks until I realized this and decided to get a masonry chisel and drilling hammer at my local hardware store for roughly ~$15.

First Chisel Attempt With Wrong Tools

Once I got a scape I was happy with, and the glue finally bonded after about ~30minutes outside of the tank. I placed them back in, doing this for each structure I wanted to make. The hardest part was trying to find a way to achieve something I was happy with.

Also!!! When chiseling rocks, I recommend proper eye wear and doing it in an area that you don’t care about rocks flying and a bunch of fine particles getting everywhere. I did this in my living room, and while rocks and sparks did fly, luckily nothing was damaged. I was left however with a mess to clean up afterwards.

Final Scape

With the rocks in place I was finally able to put in sand. I waited 24 hours for the bond to cure, and then put around 100-110lbs of aragonite/arag alive sand into the aquarium. No rinsing, which of course created an initial cloudiness that lasted 24 hours. Once it settled I re-arranged some of the sand and caused more cloudiness for another few hours.

One of the initial cloudiness pictures.

Currently I’m concerned with how small the sand grains are that I will cause a sandstorm with any power heads, however I wanted to make sure I had fine enough sand for any sand burrowing/sifting fish I would get. I’m also concerned that I’ve added too much sand to the point that it doesn’t feel like I have any rockwork. I do have some Tampa Bay saltwater live rock coming in on September 9th so that will likely be added to the DT to compensate and help with the cycle etc.

Settled Sand Picture

As you can see the rocks that seemed to be taller in the photo now look shorter with some of the base rocks on the right being entirely covered. I still need to move some sand around to fill in the back and create some caves under the shelf. The plan is to take some of the flat base rock, one on the far right corner that’s covered, and the one leaning on the overflow in the center. And use those for a structure with some decent height to it using the TBS rock that comes in September.

I may wait until then before considering any livestock, but regardless I still need to test my water params etc to see if I truly have live rock that could handle it, or if it’ll still need a full cycle. I plan to test the waters some time this week or weekend and report back!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Scape and Sand update!

Slowly but surely getting everything set up the way I like it.

After doing a lot of research on how people typically aquascape live rock I decided to go with the EMarco 400 cement. The process was pretty straightforward however unlike other reefers on this forum and others, I didn’t experience success with using it. This is likely due to user error and maybe due to the amount I was trying to add to make it a structural piece of my scape as opposed to a binding material. Not only this, but I tried applying it to areas and crevices that weren’t necessarily flat surface to surface contact. After doing a little more research I decided the next step would be to try super glue gel. Many posts have stated the gel was easier to work with and would be reef safe as long as it was made with Cyanoacrylate.

EMarco Cement Attempt

With this in mind, I started playing around with some scapes, chiseling away at rocks and finally gluing pieces together. I initially did this with a framing hammer and wood chisels, which I would not recommend unless you want to damage your tools and have a harder go at it. I did one or two rocks until I realized this and decided to get a masonry chisel and drilling hammer at my local hardware store for roughly ~$15.

First Chisel Attempt With Wrong Tools

Once I got a scape I was happy with, and the glue finally bonded after about ~30minutes outside of the tank. I placed them back in, doing this for each structure I wanted to make. The hardest part was trying to find a way to achieve something I was happy with.

Also!!! When chiseling rocks, I recommend proper eye wear and doing it in an area that you don’t care about rocks flying and a bunch of fine particles getting everywhere. I did this in my living room, and while rocks and sparks did fly, luckily nothing was damaged. I was left however with a mess to clean up afterwards.

Final Scape

With the rocks in place I was finally able to put in sand. I waited 24 hours for the bond to cure, and then put around 100-110lbs of aragonite/arag alive sand into the aquarium. No rinsing, which of course created an initial cloudiness that lasted 24 hours. Once it settled I re-arranged some of the sand and caused more cloudiness for another few hours.

One of the initial cloudiness pictures.

Currently I’m concerned with how small the sand grains are that I will cause a sandstorm with any power heads, however I wanted to make sure I had fine enough sand for any sand burrowing/sifting fish I would get. I’m also concerned that I’ve added too much sand to the point that it doesn’t feel like I have any rockwork. I do have some Tampa Bay saltwater live rock coming in on September 9th so that will likely be added to the DT to compensate and help with the cycle etc.

Settled Sand Picture

As you can see the rocks that seemed to be taller in the photo now look shorter with some of the base rocks on the right being entirely covered. I still need to move some sand around to fill in the back and create some caves under the shelf. The plan is to take some of the flat base rock, one on the far right corner that’s covered, and the one leaning on the overflow in the center. And use those for a structure with some decent height to it using the TBS rock that comes in September.

I may wait until then before considering any livestock, but regardless I still need to test my water params etc to see if I truly have live rock that could handle it, or if it’ll still need a full cycle. I plan to test the waters some time this week or weekend and report back!

Love the sand that is in your tank!