IM Nuvo 30L: built for SPS and Acropora

[ncmonserud]

Personal Background: I started marine tanks when I was super young maybe 12 or 13 with my dad and stopped when I entered into graduate school due to the time and money. Recently my wife suggest we get a tank and I went small but got some stuff to make my life easier.

Build: 30L IM Nuvo Fusion Pro

Equipment:

• 1 x Radion XR30 PRO (like the look of the single hanging light)
• 1 x Tunze 9004 AC Skimmer (Threw out the filter sock and stuck this guy in there. My wife got it for me as a getting back into the hobby present so I'm going to make it work)
• 1x RedSea Reefdose 4 (post about later, happy but they restricted there equipment for no reason)
• 1 x EcoTech VorTech mp10wqd (these are awesome if these were around 15 years ago I would have never been able to afford them, but I would also not need 3 pumps in a tank with crazy timer setup.
• 1 x MightyJet 538 DC Return Pump (included in pro IM kit maybe replace later but it's fine for now)
• 1 x Seneye Reef (decent par meeter for under $1000 and it does temp, pH and ammonia. Amazing)
• 1 x Aquatic Life 50 gal. RO/DI filter (small but works for what I need)

Fish/Invert Wish List:

• 2 x Picasso Clown Fish (Beautiful designer clowns, have always and will always love clowns)
• 1 x Bubble Tip Anemone (Can't have clowns without an Anemone)
• 1 x Female Vermiculate leopard Wrasse (Reef police will jump on my case for this one. I know the argument "tanks too small" but don't care that is what makes it a hobby because you can push boundaries and not follow the crowd and find what works for you)
• 1 x Cleaner Shrimp
• Don't know if I'll add anything more but we will see

 

[Sean Clark]

Looking good. Following along.

 

[ncmonserud]

So I actually began this tank back in beginning of November and have been doing a lights off cycle since.

For the cycle:

1. I went fishless, by taking a brightwell Xport-NO3 Bio Brick and let it soak in a tub of Brightwells Microbacter7 for 24 hours.
2. tossed that in the return of the AIO
3. Dossed Dr. Tim's Aquatics Ammonium Chloride (maybe a bit more then I should have)
4. Waited
5. and Waited
6. and Waited
7. Seneye finally showed the spike and back down in ammonia. All in all this took about a week and a half not that long at all.
8. Watched the Nitrite go up and come down, about another week.
9. Water Change and Cycle Complete
10. We went to a LFS in the area and got some Snails (1 x fighting conch and 4 x trochus snails) needed some life in there while we went on vacation for three weeks.

 

[New&no clue]

I love the Nuvo 30L. I have one in my office; it's an awesome tank. Have you thought about a goby/pistol shrimp pair? I have one in my tank, and they are amusing to watch. Please keep us updated on the skimmer. I was looking at adding it to my tank but wasn't sure. I had the IM desktop skimmer, which I didn't like.

 

[Alex's Nano Reef]

Amazing Tank always nice to get back into the hobby. whats amazing coming back as you said all this new tech that has came out even alot of methods have changed overtime aswell. i love the IM AIO tanks they are so slick and look amazing. cant wait to see some updates.

 

[ncmonserud]

I love the Nuvo 30L. I have one in my office; it's an awesome tank. Have you thought about a goby/pistol shrimp pair? I have one in my tank, and they are amusing to watch. Please keep us updated on the skimmer. I was looking at adding it to my tank but wasn't sure. I had the IM desktop skimmer, which I didn't like.

I just started up the Tunze so I'm still in the break in period but i have found it extremely difficult to adjust due to water height so i have not gotten in quite right. I'll probably do a separate post either once I get it dialed in or give up and scream for help.

 

[ncmonserud]

Amazing Tank always nice to get back into the hobby. whats amazing coming back as you said all this new tech that has came out even alot of methods have changed overtime aswell. i love the IM AIO tanks they are so slick and look amazing. cant wait to see some updates.

I love the IM 30l it is a beautiful tank and that long form factor is what I have always been looking for without adding another 10" of height. Can't wait to fill it out some more.

 

[ncmonserud]

Live Stock Update:
I got two Picasso Clownfish (Bonnie & Clyde) around second week in January since we have left it as a snails only tank while we were away on holiday.
They are Beautiful but slowly killing me. They swim together which is nice that they might already be starting to pair but they swim, sleep and eat in the top left corner for the past month and a half. We are getting ready to turn the lights on after 3.5 months dark tank. But I'm really hoping they do come out more once the lights are on a consistent schedule. Crossing my fingers.

 

[jcolliii]

Thank your lucky stars you didn't buy an IM Nuvoskim. Pumps fail in as little as a few weeks. Not bad skimmers, awful pumps tho. Nice looking setup. Things have changed tho. Coral prices 15 years ago, and the amount of coral you get for those prices...

Looking good so far!

 

[ncmonserud]

Thank your lucky stars you didn't buy an IM Nuvoskim. Pumps fail in as little as a few weeks. Not bad skimmers, awful pumps tho. Nice looking setup. Things have changed tho. Coral prices 15 years ago, and the amount of coral you get for those prices...

Looking good so far!

Yes i stayed away from the IM Skimmer due to pore reviews I saw here. The Tunze 9004 is finally starting to foam nicely just had to get the water level constant and flip the direction of it toward the outer wall.
Coral prices are crazy. I just got a WCC order I'll post on and wow very nice healthy corals but the two birds nest were more like sticks then a nest.
I got a few acros and they are sky high pricing for a small little piece but I guess is is what it is these days. Would love a few torchs but 250-1000 is way out of my price range for a single headed coral.

 

[New&no clue]

Yes i stayed away from the IM Skimmer due to pore reviews I saw here. The Tunze 9004 is finally starting to foam nicely just had to get the water level constant and flip the direction of it toward the outer wall.
Coral prices are crazy. I just got a WCC order I'll post on and wow very nice healthy corals but the two birds nest were more like sticks then a nest.
I got a few acros and they are sky high pricing for a small little piece but I guess is is what it is these days. Would love a few torchs but 250-1000 is way out of my price range for a single headed coral.

Glad to hear the skimmer is working better. I’ll be interested to hear what you think after a couple months.

 

[ncmonserud]

Review: Red Sea Reefdose 4
I recently installed a reefdose 4 on my tank and have been using it for around a month now and my impression are mostly good.

Pros: Over all I would say the reef dose is incredibly well designed in almost every way. The pump itself is easy to pull apart and repair. The system is compact and you can easily hang it with your other controllers instead of needing to have a shelf. The priming button is a nice feature that could have been skipped but makes it easy on you when replacing supplements. The app is intuitive and really gives nice step by step instructions for everything. Calibration is simple although I would agree with most reviews in that if you want to utilize the hyper accuracy of the dose you need to get a scale.

Cons: I would say there is only one major con and that is the limits Redsea has imposed on the doser (Max 24 doses in a 24 hour period and only up to 999 ml dosed a day). This makes it completely impractical for dosing kalk on any system thus, limiting you to super concentrated supplements. My tank is a 30L as you see above in the thread and yet I would like to dose a decrease saturation of kalk and have it almost keep up with my 1500ml of evaporation and yet the artificial limits imposed by Redsea make it impossible to hit close to that number. These numbers were probably taken directly off the bottle to Redsea products making it difficult for you to use none Redsea products but I think they made a mistake, in that, hardware like this should be as flexible as the user and not impose artificial limits on the user through software restrictions.

Closing: overall I'll make it work but the current programming limits your flexibility and imposes limits on what you can do with the pumps.

 

[ncmonserud]

Recently got some beautiful corals and a BTA from the WWC blizzard sale which are all amazing.

New Additions:

• WWC Red Cadillac Acropora
• Ogre Slayer Acropora
• WWC Pink Passion Acropora
• Green Birdsnest
• WWC Firestone Stylocoeniella: little surprised by this one out of the random 4 pack but very beautiful.
• WWC Purple polyp Birdsnest
• WWC Spearmint Montipora Cap
• Rainbow Bubble Anemone

still trying to get the blues out of the photos without shifting the lighting schedule. Once I figure out proper camera settings for the tank I'll post some coral pictures. But wow as much as I play can't get images like they have online but the corals are beautiful.

 

[ncmonserud]

So today I noticed a bit of brown algae (more then likely diatoms) on the rock and sand bed. I came across this thread/science project and found it to be quite interesting. I figured I would try to start dosing phytoplankton while at the same time get my copepod population going for the future wrasse addition. I bought some ecopods & ocean magik and started dosing the ocean magic (phytoplankton) last night and dumped all the copepods in also. Could not get a picture of the copepods swimming in the jar so here is another plug for @algeabarn , great customer service and some very good blog posts. Crossing my fingers for it to help with nuisance algae or to help with my coral coloration and growth.

 

[X-37B]

Live Stock Update:
I got two Picasso Clownfish (Bonnie & Clyde) around second week in January since we have left it as a snails only tank while we were away on holiday.
They are Beautiful but slowly killing me. They swim together which is nice that they might already be starting to pair but they swim, sleep and eat in the top left corner for the past month and a half. We are getting ready to turn the lights on after 3.5 months dark tank. But I'm really hoping they do come out more once the lights are on a consistent schedule. Crossing my fingers.

Very nice system cant wait to see it grow!

Love those clowns!
Have your clowns left the corner yet?
I have a pair in my 120 and they swim all over the tank. My 120 is 95% acros so they have nothing to host in.

In my 45 frag system I have a clown thats going on 6 years old and this is its third system it has been in. It wont venture more than a few inches from the 20+ head frogspawn it lives in.
I moved the frogspawn to the back corner overflow so I can now work in the tank without being bit, lol.

Keep this build thread updated!
I love to see tanks from day one through several years.

 

[ncmonserud]

Very nice system cant wait to see it grow!

Love those clowns!
Have your clowns left the corner yet?
I have a pair in my 120 and they swim all over the tank. My 120 is 95% acros so they have nothing to host in.

In my 45 frag system I have a clown thats going on 6 years old and this is its third system it has been in. It wont venture more than a few inches from the 20+ head frogspawn it lives in.
I moved the frogspawn to the back corner overflow so I can now work in the tank without being bit, lol.

Keep this build thread updated!
I love to see tanks from day one through several years.

Very nice system cant wait to see it grow!

Love those clowns!
Have your clowns left the corner yet?
I have a pair in my 120 and they swim all over the tank. My 120 is 95% acros so they have nothing to host in.

In my 45 frag system I have a clown thats going on 6 years old and this is its third system it has been in. It wont venture more than a few inches from the 20+ head frogspawn it lives in.
I moved the frogspawn to the back corner overflow so I can now work in the tank without being bit, lol.

Keep this build thread updated!
I love to see tanks from day one through several years.

Yah they were in the corner for the past month and a half. I finally got a bit tired of it so i cought them and put them in an acclimation box. Then my anemone started moving because the flow in my tank changed due to the box. So i decided to try the acclimation box technique for getting the anemone to host the clowns so i cought the anemone and put it in there within a few min the clowns were playing in the anemone. I left them in the box for two days then released them with a hope they would choose the anemone over there corner spot and it seemed to work. See next post can't add a picture here for some reason.

On another note I hope i can keep it going it will be nice to have a record of the tank to look back on.

 

[ncmonserud]

The clowns seem to have taken a liking to the anemone although the smaller clown gets chased off every morning. He still has a nice place to sleep.

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

looks great! happy to see another person joining the 30l club!

 

[ncmonserud]

looks great! happy to see another person joining the 30l club!

I really love it so far I'm excited to see what i can do with the long form factor.

 

[mrjoe]

Personal Background: I started marine tanks when I was super young maybe 12 or 13 with my dad and stopped when I entered into graduate school due to the time and money. Recently my wife suggest we get a tank and I went small but got some stuff to make my life easier.

Build: 30L IM Nuvo Fusion Pro

Equipment:

• 1 x Radion XR30 PRO (like the look of the single hanging light)
• 1 x Tunze 9004 AC Skimmer (Threw out the filter sock and stuck this guy in there. My wife got it for me as a getting back into the hobby present so I'm going to make it work)
• 1x RedSea Reefdose 4 (post about later, happy but they restricted there equipment for no reason)
• 1 x EcoTech VorTech mp10wqd (these are awesome if these were around 15 years ago I would have never been able to afford them, but I would also not need 3 pumps in a tank with crazy timer setup.
• 1 x MightyJet 538 DC Return Pump (included in pro IM kit maybe replace later but it's fine for now)
• 1 x Seneye Reef (decent par meeter for under $1000 and it does temp, pH and ammonia. Amazing)
• 1 x Aquatic Life 50 gal. RO/DI filter (small but works for what I need)

Fish/Invert Wish List:

• 2 x Picasso Clown Fish (Beautiful designer clowns, have always and will always love clowns)
• 1 x Bubble Tip Anemone (Can't have clowns without an Anemone)
• 1 x Female Vermiculate leopard Wrasse (Reef police will jump on my case for this one. I know the argument "tanks too small" but don't care that is what makes it a hobby because you can push boundaries and not follow the crowd and find what works for you)
• 1 x Cleaner Shrimp
• Don't know if I'll add anything more but we will see

how do you like the stand... my first thoughts were.. meh... I like their older stands better since the doors completely covered the inside... any thoughts on these?