DeepHouse_Jedi's IM 100g EXT

[Deephouse_jedi]

Hi Everyone!

After a 5 year break from the hobby I am very excited to be getting back into it. My tank journey started with a fluval 13.5 -> JBJ 45 AIO -> now an IM 100 ext. I almost got the IM 150 lagoon INT, but it didn't pass the wife test.

I'm super excited to set up this take using my intermediate knowledge of the hobby. Sump is under the tank, very big sump for this tank. The sump is about 57 gallons. Plenty of room for awesome stuff, but it's going to be right getting the apex and cables nice and neat under there. Salt mixing station is in the basement. I plan to use automation a lot on this tank to make my life easy, but we'll see if the more complexity causes more headaches.

I love all corals! So this will be a mix coral tank, maybe 60% SPS and 40% LPS and Softies. The mandarin Dragonette is my dream fish. I plan to seed this tank heavily with copepods after the cycle. I don't plan on adding anything that may jeopardize the copepods colony for at least 6 months. I hope that's enough to get a stable colonization going.

Wish me luck!!

 

[tbrown]

Good luck!

Nice rock scape. I can't wait to see it full of corals and fish!

 

[Deephouse_jedi]

I'm going to try and keep updating, but life's busy and I'm bad at this sort of thing lol.

I decided to run the automations on the GHL ecosystem. Yes, connecting is a pain in the butt. Once it's set up it's usually smooth sailing from there. I wanted reliability over everything else, so I can deal with the difficult connections to have peace of mind it will run with no issues. That's been my experience with GHL in the past.

I have the salt mixing station up. The station is directly below the tank in the basement. ATO will run directly from the fresh rodi tank up to the sump.

I also set up the auto water change system using GHL Maxi 3. I'm very excited about the AWC and it was a must have for this tank. I have the fresh saltwater pulling from the storage tank in the basement and the waste saltwater is going across the basement to my washers drain.

I've already had 2 leaks at the mixing station. Those have since been fixed. I decided I will buy shower base liner and put under the mixing tanks. A ghl leak detector will go on the ground there. That will give me peace of mind that something won't break below and syphon the tank.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[tbrown]

Following along!

 

[bmheath]

The tank will look very good in that spot in your house. Love the rock work. Excited to see it filled with sea creatures!

 

[Deephouse_jedi]

This week's updates:

Update 1:

Lights are up. I went with 2 Radion XR-15's and added 2 shades from @Reefer1978 I highly recommend his shades if you're looking. They're 3d printed, but you can barely tell. I don't know much about 3d printing but I assume they have a high quality printer because they're super smooth and look good in the living room.

Update 2:

I tried culturing my own phyto and copepods. I really want to seed the tank and get a good population going fast. I don't want to buy phyto every month.

Attempt 1 I crashed the Phyto culture. I'm not entirely sure why it crashed, probably too close to the heater. I'll have to try sanitize and try again. I'm definitely taking any constructive criticism on this as well. Let me know what I need to do lol.

The copepod culture is going great though. I'm a week I'm already seeing a huge boost in population. I'll dose some into the tank along with some phyto. I feel like I need a lot of phyto in order to keep the population growing in the tank.

Update 3:

I also got the Profilux and KH director almost installed. Ran into an issue getting the Profilux connected to my home network. It ended up being my Eero mesh router. These mesh routers combine all frequencies into 1. The Profilux needs 2.4ghz. There's a setting to turn off the 5 and 6 ghz frequencies in the router settings. Once I did that the Profilux connected. The router reverts back to mesh after 30 minutes. I thought the profilux would loose connection, but it didn't. After that I've had zero connection issues.

I bought the KH director and doser pumps used. One of the pumps started sticking so I bought the replacement roller kits from GHL. Once those come in all the dosers will get a good cleaning and new rollers, covers, and tubes.

Update 4:

Lastly, I installed the shower pan liner under my tanks. I have a small leak on 1 of the PVC pipes connections. I tried adding more glue in hopes it would seal, but no luck. It's currently leaking maybe 1 tbsp every 3-5 days. I'm being lazy and doing nothing now lol. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I think there's some tape I could wrap it in.

 

[tbrown]

What variety of phyto?

 

[Deephouse_jedi]

What variety of phyto?

Nanno

 

[tbrown]

That stinks. I ran Nanno, T Iso, and I think Tetra.

The Nanno was good. Seemed hard to kill. The other two came from TSA and they were old cultures so they never really took off and eventually just crashed.

 

[Deephouse_jedi]

Man, it's almost been 3 weeks since my last update. I knew I'd be bad at this lol.

Everything is moving along nicely. Tank has been cycled and I got a couple rounds of fish and coral.

2 x longfin black ice clownfish. These have always been a dream fish of mine. I got these from Cultivated Reef and I couldn't be happier with and the customer service from Cultivated Reef. The pair was almost identical to what they showcase on their website. Highly recommend them if you're searching for designer clowns. Can't wait to watch these little ones grow.

1 x adult Borbonious Anthias

Another dream fish of mine. It was a bit of an impulse buy too. A LFS claimed to have this guy for 2 months before I walked in. He was eating really well and had seemed to be acclimated to the aquarium well. Also, since I didn't have a lot of fish in the tank I thought it was a good time to add such a shy fish. It's been a few weeks and he is eating like a pig and thriving. He's super comfortable in the tank and is already showing some pet like behavior by coming to the glass when I go to feed. I'm happy and hopefully he is too.

I also got a watchman goby and pistol shrimp. I feel no reef is complete without some clowns and goby/pistol shrimp. Of course, sandbed is required. No pics of these two, sorry. They're still shy and I don't see too often.

That's it for fish. Here's the rest of my fish list. I would love for feedback on it.

Pair of Clowns ✓
Watchman goby & pistol shrimp ✓
Borbonius Anthias ✓

Fathead Anthias ? (Might not get him or drop the lyretails down to 3)
Flame hawkfish

Purple filefish
5 x lyretail anthias

Flame Angel

Mandarin Dragonette (Biota)
Leopards Wrasse

Flame fin Tomini Tang

Would a Gem tang be too much?


On to the newly added coral.

Handful of zoa's, weeping willow toadstool, 2 torches, 2 hammers, a Frogspawn, jawbreaker, magic carpet, sunkist, a couple montipora jf slowburn and vino monti.

I still have my lights low and acclimating for my borbonious. The corals are not loving that, but they should bounce back. I have 2 Radion xr15 and I'm always debating on adding 2 AI blades. I had T5's and radions on my last tank. The colors of my coral were phenomenal. I want to try and achieve that again, but don't love the look of T5s over the tank.

Does anyone have feed back on the Radion/AI blade combo? Looks like a good amount of people run them.

Anyway, here's some corals!

I also can't seem to shake these bacteria blooms. The tank has had a bloom for about a week now. It's not getting worse, but it's also not getting better. I do overfeed, but I've been getting better. I wanted to make sure the Borbonious was getting his fill of food. I think the overfeeding has been the main cause. I do a 2.5 gallon water change each day. I believe this is causing the bloom to linger as well. I have t paused the water changes because my nitrate and phosphate were getting high. Once I get those parameters where I want I'll probably do the water changes every other day if the bloom still exists. I haven't noticed any heavy breathing from the fish so I think oxygen levels are still fine.

Let me know if you have any feedback on this too? I definitely want this bloom gone sooner rather than later.

Another con, the GHL system has been a pain in the butt. Im not particularly happy with it and their customer service at the moment. I bought a Doser Maxi 3 for my auto water change. After a week the inner tube ruptured causing me to pause the water changes for a week. Of course, they didn't have any in stock..I also asked for a replacement since it should be cover under warranty, right? They didn't even respond back to my email. Then I bought a leak detector and that wasn't functioning correctly. They at least responded with "Did you follow the instructions?" Yes I followed the instructions and then they ghosted me on that! So I have a broken leak detector and a maxi 3 that broke after a week. I found the tube they used online and fixed it so I'm up and running again. I used a lot of Vaseline on the pump rotary parts. Hopefully that helps and prolongs life.

Here's the website if you have GHL Equipment. Use these tubes, they work just as good and are much cheaper, but still kinda expensive for what you get.

https://www.usplastic.com/

Use this website instead of going to GHL. Very hard for me to recommend them after the small issues I've encountered with poor resolutions.

 

[MakingMistakes]

Following along and also running a 100 ext. Also doing the AWC. Also running the Radions and considering blades. I don’t think I need more light but would like to cut down on shadows.

Very similar setups.
Is the second tank in the basement RO/DI to refill the saltwater mix and for ATO?

 

[Deephouse_jedi]

Following along and also running a 100 ext. Also doing the AWC. Also running the Radions and considering blades. I don’t think I need more light but would like to cut down on shadows.

Very similar setups.
Is the second tank in the basement RO/DI to refill the saltwater mix and for ATO?

Yes, I use it for both refilling fresh salt and the ATO taps right into it.