Another Innovative Marine 200EXT build thread

[Grallster]

Hi all, my name is Dave and I’ve had fish tanks for almost my whole life. I was thinking about it the other day, and I’ve had at least one saltwater tank in constant operation since 1994. I lurk on here quite a bit but don’t post a whole lot—so I figured, why not do a build thread for my new tank?

Around the beginning of the year, I had 5 fish tanks:
10 gallon mangrove/goni tank
25 gallon frag tank
50 gallon softie/eel/lionfish tank
90 gallon softie
120 gallon mostly SPS tank

Despite the number of tanks—some of the inhabitants were getting squeezed. Most notably, the lion fish and eel in their 50 gallon. So my goal was to upgrade to a bigger and tank and kinda combine some tanks, take down the 50 gallon and still end up with 5 tanks.
I really wanted a bigger tank but reality set in and I knew I had to put the tank in the basement. At that point Innovative Marine was having a decent sale so I ordered the 200EXT. I really liked the external overflow and didn’t want my aquascape to be limited. I would have gotten the 240 EXT but the price jump from the 200 to the 240 is just ridiculous, so here I am.
I ordered the tank, I think, around early December of last year. I received it at the end of February.
I’ve never done a build thread before so I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I think that I’m going from the beginning as if I am just setting up the tank even though (most) of the work is done already.
Hope you tag along!

 

[Uncle99]

OMG….5?
I have trouble with just 1!

 

[Grallster]

I got the tank in the garage no problem and the tank and stand were well packaged.

I didn’t get the sump because I thought it was too expensive and didn’t suit my needs anyway—no need to force a square peg into a round hole. I knew I wanted a bigger tank so I had already bought and Aquamaxx Cone-S 5 when they were being discontinued (I love these skimmers). This skimmer has a large footprint that I’m not sure would have fit in their sump. I also wanted to section off the stand for a dry side and controller panel and I’m not sure if their long sump would have allowed for this.

 

[Grallster]

OMG….5?
I have trouble with just 1!

Yeah. I’m the poster boy for my reefer friends who can tell their wives, “At least I’m not Dave”.

 

[Kasrift]

Got my IM 200g up with fish last week. Long journey.

I ended up getting an Aquaeon 60g breeder to use as a sump and grabbed baffles off of an eBay seller.

 

[Rp8]

I assemble one of these for a customer. Super simple.

 

[Grallster]

Well the tank is well built and the stand seemed so. The crossbars they sent me were about 1/8” short—I could not get the stand together and expect it to hold a ton plus of saltwater. Innovative Marine’s customer service was very responsive—they gaslighted me through about 20 emails before I could finally

convince them that they sent the wrong pieces (despite pictures with a tape measure on them). They didn’t ask for the short pieces back and I ended up using them to my advantage (more on that later).

 

[JumboShrimp]

Time to spend another $20.00 (what could it possibly matter at this point, right? ) for a feeding port for your screen top.

Enjoy your beautiful new tank. Looking forward to updates!

 

[Grallster]

It took 6 strong guys (ok middle aged dudes) to get the behemoth into the basement. I think it’s even heavier than they say. I also involved a substantial amount of malted beverage. I can’t even find any pictures of getting it down there because we must have just been just trying to survive at that point.

 

[Grallster]

Many thanks to @Bender and @Blindzy among others!

 

[gsxrshane]

It took 6 strong guys (ok middle aged dudes) to get the behemoth into the basement. I think it’s even heavier than they say. I also involved a substantial amount of malted beverage. I can’t even find any pictures of getting it down there because we must have just been just trying to survive at that point.

This is what terrifies me the most for getting a big setup

 

[Grallster]

The stand is great because it has 5 doors. It allowed me to section off the sump from a dry side (for my plugs, dosing, Trident and such) and a controller section on the end.

 

[Grallster]

It took 6 strong guys (ok middle aged dudes) to get the behemoth into the basement. I think it’s even heavier than they say. I also involved a substantial amount of malted beverage. I can’t even find any pictures of getting it down there because we must have just been just trying to survive at that point.

This is what terrifies me the most for getting a big setup

Yep. It was a lot of beer…

 

[Grallster]

My apologies, when I said the crossbars were 1/8” too short—I meant to say they were an 1/8” too LONG. This allowed me to cut and drill them to use them as supports for the partitions.

 

[Grallster]

I added lights and a DJ strip:

 

[Grallster]

I wanted a simple sump with just a filter cup, skimmer, ATS, and return section. I also wanted to take advantage of as much room as possible. I bought some acrylic, designed the sump, and then turned to @Bender. The acrylic guru who built a 24 X 40 sump and dosing reservoir (I helped some )

 

[Grallster]

I went with 2 Sicce SDC 6.0 for return pumps—for redundancy, extra flow, and to run a manifold for my ATS and carbon reactor. I’m also running 2X MP40s and am planning on adding a 3rd.

 

[Grallster]

I went with 3X Kessil AP9X since I’m planning on mostly SPS. I’ve been running 2X A360X on my 120 gallon and love them but found I would like more light/sq ft.
I turned the bracket for their mounting bracket around and screwed them to the wall. The middle one was the hardest.

 

[Grallster]

In the meantime, I put around 70 pounds of Marco dry rock along with 20 pounds of Marco live rock (this stuff is pricy but great) in a tub with saltwater and run it under light and flow for about 3 months. Now remember, this is a project that involves 3 other tanks too—basically we had about 250 pounds of live rock to swap around and aquascape with. What a daunting but awesomely fun task though!! (This also involved plenty of malted beverages).

 

[Grallster]

It was quite a day but we aquascaped 3 different tanks and moved about 30 fish around.