The Hurricane Build - IM Fusion 20

Centerline · Sep 10, 2017

This weekend we have been sitting in the house and waiting for Hurricane Irma to hit. We have had pretty good lucky in that the bulk of the storm has moved to the other coast of Florida but we are still expecting 65-75 mph wind gusts before dawn. Hopefully the wind will not take out the electricity but I'm ready if it does. 30 mph at the moment gusting to 50 with lots of unnerving tornado laden bands passing through at the moment - such is life in Florida. There really is not a lot you can do during a hurricane but try to get out of its way and stay safe. We are safe and unfortunately very bored as well. So, I thought it a good time to take advantage of the downtime and complete a project I started last week.

Thus - The Hurricane Build

Two weeks ago I was having some issues with a tank at my office and decided to move some of the more valuable corals into a smaller tank at my house until I had figured out what the score with the office tank was. The only problem is that I didn't have a small tank at home. I had been looking at some options for a quarantine tank and a small chalice tank that I could plumb into my main tank at home (a build in progress that has yet to see any water) and after looking at several options ended up scoring a Nuvo 20. Nice little tank all in all. So I grabbed a little live rock and sand from the office tank and fired it up last weekend. And that's about all I did aside test for ammonia and look for a cycle. I did toss some Microbacter 7, Prodibio, 15 Marine Pure ceramic spheres and a touch of N0P0x daily - the tank was cycled.

I have been fortunate in that I already had most of the gear for the build so didn't have to lay out a bunch of cash.

Hardware...

Tank - Nuvo 20 tank with stock return pump
Stand - RedSea 175 Reefer Stand
Lighting - AI Hydra 52 HD (yes, extreme over kill - but I had it already)
Flow - MP10w
Backup Battery - Ecotech
Controller - Apex (again, I already had it for my 525 build)
Apex Wireless Module for the MP10
Heater - Crappy glass heater

Livestock....

Numerous rainbow chalice and a couple of legacy ones that I really like.
Three rainbow acans (though they really don't look like it under LEDs)
About 8 small Japanese acan frags that are... sigh... struggling.
Some nice mushrooms on a combo rock.
Two very small clown gobies.
Two very small red blennies.
Several aptasia that have popped out of nowhere. (yea, better take care of those asap!)
Several small blue legged hermits.

*I still need a few snails and I may score a few peppermint shrimp to deal with the aptasia both obvious and not so much.

Parameters...

78-80 deg
Cal 450
Alk 8.5
Mg 1350
P04 >.2
N03 15is
SG .33 - .34 @ 78 deg
PH ? Not sure as I have yes to calibrate the PH probe

Observations...

The corals all look healthy and open. I've been running the lights at 20% blues, 10% UV&Violet, 5% white, 0% Green, 0% Red. Par on the bottom is @ 120 in the center of the tank. I plan to raise that to 150 this coming week.

Shots of the inside of the cabinet.

So that's about it for the moment!

prsnlty · Sep 11, 2017

Looking great!

jsker · Sep 11, 2017

Very nice build

Centerline · Sep 12, 2017

prsnlty said:
Looking great!

Thank you very much!

Centerline · Sep 12, 2017

jsker said:
Very nice build

Thank you very much!

Centerline · Sep 12, 2017

So the Nuvo 20...

This would be my first sub 40gl tank. I've owned everything from 300 gl systems down to 40 breeders and all of them have had a sump and skimmer. So I'm a little curious about how demanding the maintenance schedule is going to be. That said I've done two 20% water changes on it so far and they were trivial affairs. If you look at the cabinet pictures above you will see that I have an Apex DOS in there and my tentative plan is to run a continuous water change, maybe 10 gallons a week or about a gallon and a half daily. To do so I'm going to need to find a ATO container that has three compartments and holds about 25 gallons of water. One chamber each for fresh saltwater, waste water and top-off water. 20x20x15 fits the space and volume requirements but I'm almost afraid to look as I know it will be expensive as heck. Anyway - back to the Nuvo.

So the tank is a very polished little 20 with 5 chambers in the back of it - below is a diagram showing how I'm currently using it and pointing out some things I would like to change.

Felt filter bags (200 micron). - They work great and stuffing a little filter floss in the top looks like it will extend the time between changes.

Ceramic Bio Media. - These are the 1.5" spheres. About 15 of them fit in the second chamber and by all accounts that's more than enough to service this little tank.

Gaudy block of probes. - They are actually hanging outside of the chamber but I would really like to find a better solution. I don't want to see them in the tank and I need a place that has good flow to ensure good readings. Putting them in the Heater chamber would be perfect except there is a heater in it. I have gone through a lot of trouble to keep the probe wires away from anything that would cause EMF issues. Sticking them in with the heater would just defeat the effort - certainly with the temp and salinity probes.

Smaller than I would like return pump. - After listening to it make odd noises for a few days (it is getting quitter) I've concluded its not moving enough water to keep me or my corals happy. I need to find a good silent return pump that will move more water and possibly support a couple of spinners. Ill be posting to the nano forum shortly looking for advice. If you have any advice please post it here.

Heater. - Awful lot of extra room in that compartment but I'm not sure where else I can put it. I don't want it touching anything in case the tank runs dry or something unexpected happens and I end up with who knows what happening. It is a crappy little heater as well and that doesn't sit well with me as I shocked the crap out of myself with one several years ago. Ill probably trade it out with a Finnex 100 shortly as one should be small enough to fit in the center chamber without touching the returns.

Silly Media Tower. - Well I knew better than to purchase it when I did. The water doesn't flow efficiently through the trays when load with media bags such as a Purigen bag. Ill need to find or build some sort of reactor that fits well.

Intrusive MP10. - This going to be a love hate thing for me. I would really like to NOT see anything in the tank aside from livestock, sand and rock. Maybe a better pump will provide enough flow to be able to accomplish this. Flow aside though the MP10 combined with the EcoTech backup battery has been keeping the tank alive for two days now as I have no electricity due to Hurricane Irma (running a generator at night to keep the battery topped off). Do I really want to give that lifesaving failsafe measure up because I'm all of the sudden being WAY more picky than I have ever been with gear in the tank before?

revhtree · Sep 12, 2017

Looking good!

Centerline · Sep 12, 2017

revhtree said:
Looking good!

Thank you very much!

jsker · Sep 12, 2017

I like the plan layout.

Centerline · Sep 13, 2017

jsker said:
I like the plan layout.

Ya, I ordered a Finnex yesterday after posting. When I got home last night I took a second look at the available space in the return compartment think that it will fit in there without touching anything else.

jsker · Sep 13, 2017

Centerline said:
Ya, I ordered a Finnex yesterday after posting. When I got home last night I took a second look at the available space in the return compartment think that it will fit in there without touching anything else.

I really have been happy with my Finnex heater. Using the controller temp stays steady.

PlanB · Sep 23, 2017

Looks good, and a great idea to have small emergency tank. I've been looking at the Nuvo's as well, as a second tank, and I always thought it could be a good hospital tank in emergencies - for obvious reasons, but mainly power consumption during outages, as a single UPS could power a MP10 for quite some time.

How did you fare the storm?

Centerline · Sep 23, 2017

PlanB said:
Looks good, and a great idea to have small emergency tank. I've been looking at the Nuvo's as well, as a second tank, and I always thought it could be a good hospital tank in emergencies - for obvious reasons, but mainly power consumption during outages, as a single UPS could power a MP10 for quite some time.

How did you fare the storm?

Ya, they are great little tanks. You won't be disappointed.
With respect to Irma, compared to all of the folks around here who got flooded out, lost roofs and had their homes drop into the ocean (Google Vilano beach hurricane Irma. It will make you never want ocean front property in a hurricane zone!), I did just fine with the exception of a tank at my office that was already having problems. Lost a bunch of sps / lps over the last 10 days. Tank probably got too hot for too long. It had plenty of water movement via two gyres on battery backup but it was in the 90s in the office for a few days and took a few days after to start falling appart. At least my little chalice collection is alive and well. Thanks for asking!

Centerline · Sep 28, 2017

Changing the layout of the baffles has really been on my mind but within a month or so I plan to incorporate this into a larger system by drilling the tank and adding an overflow that utilizes the sump from the larger system. I did score a DOC skimmer for it and as expected it produces a bunch of tea colored skim mate and needs to be emptied daily. That may change as it breaks in. The skimmer is a serious foam making machine so hopefully It will take care of 02 needs and help keep the PH up.

I also added a couple of other corals as my params are still in line.

Its a bummer that this picture is so oversaturated with blue that you cant see the colors in this scoly - crazy. I scored the scoly, big honkin rainbow chalice and few smaller chalice from @BSA Corals - remarkable corals and perfect shipping. I also scored a Ludicrous frag in the same shipment but have yet to figure out how to photograph it because it has so many colors in it that my camera phone cant seem to pick up.

And here is a tank shot - bit blurry as usual.

Par is running around 120 or so in the center of the tank and drops down to 70 on the outside edges. Everything appears health so that seems to be appropriate for the moment.

Any thoughts on the par level would be appreciated @jsker . I'm noticing one of the acans turning a little orange and some of the yellows in a couple of the chalices shifting to a yellow green.

I've been running the lights at 20% blues, 10% UV&Violet, 5% white, 0% Green, 0% Red.

Added a few small peppermint shrimp to deal with the few small aptasia but they seem more interested in walking around on the chalice. I may have to take the aptasia matter into my own hands.

Centerline · Oct 8, 2017

So a small update on the tank and the DOC skimmer. First the skimmer. As I mentioned before it is a a little bubble making machine and it actually does a respectable job skimming producing about a 1/4" of skimmate very other day. The amount seems about right as I feed very little, a finch of Coral Frenzy .5 mm pellets a day, a pinch of Polyp Labs Reef Roids every few days and .5 ml of KZs LPS formula every other day. Not enough to cause the skimmer to produce much. The skimmer itself is not particularly responsive when tuning it though and I suspect with a little more effort I might be able to get a little more performance out of it.

Centerline · Oct 8, 2017

With respect to the health of the tank I have to say I'm very happy so far. I'm not seeing a bunch of odd color shifts from my LED schedule, everything seems nice and healthy, just a touch of algae here and there that I'm dealing with on the spot. I added a couple of small peppermint that seem to have dealt with a few small aptasia I had and of course they add a little character to the tank. Below are a couple of shots I took a moment ago.

All in all I'm really starting to like this little tank.

Daniel@R2R · Oct 11, 2017

Looking great! Beautiful collection!

Centerline · Oct 12, 2017

mdbannister said:
Looking great! Beautiful collection!

Thanks Man! Its coming along pretty good. The tank is pretty easy to manage as water changes take very little time.

Centerline · Jan 15, 2018

So Saturday I added some more rock to the tank - the initial work looks like this,

In the tank however it looks like this

These images are really not very good - I traded a S7 Edge for a Pixel 2 XL and I have to say I'm not at all happy with the pictures of my tank it renders. Pretty much zero control over the white balance aside from a couple of common settings - nothing custom and no expert mode. Focus is weird when it comes to reef pics as well.

Anyway as you can see from the first picture the idea was to add a little scaping that was nice and open and if the pictures weren't so weird you would be able to see the caves but I think the rocks themselves are just too large for the tank. Ill probably pull all this back out and play with this a bit, see if I cant open it up a little more. If not Ill see what else I can find. I also DO NOT like the idea of the rock setting on the sand in this small tank. My experience has been that detritus will build up all around rock and cause problems sooner or later. And that will be a problem in this tank as I need to feed pretty heavily a couple of times a week. I'm really starting to think I should have gone for a bare bottom tank here.