DomiKasReef I.M Nuvo 20 Setup!

DomiKasReef · Jul 7, 2019

Just getting back into the hobby and I have setup a new Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 20 Pro!
I gotta say the quality of the tank is great and I'm really happy with it. Also grabbed the APS black stand.

I like the stand, it's light and looks nice, but I have to say putting it together was not very straight forward. It took me a bit of time and fine tuning just to get the stand square. They could have done a better job and added exact placement notches for the hardware to tighten, making squaring it up a lot easier. Overall though, I'm extremely happy with the quality of both.

I've been out of the hobby for a long time so all the great new toys available are fun (and dangerous on the wallet) to see.
I kind of went all "reefer madness" with the setup.
Apex, ATK, DOS, WXM, MP10, and more I'll get into later.

I wanted to start clean so I started with some AQUAMAXX ECO-ROCK DRY LIVE ROCK.
Really love the stuff. It was easy to work with, lots of little holes, pieces hook to each other very well and looks great to me too. Breaking it up was a little tough at times, but nothing a sledge hammer can't handle!

I initially got 25lbs and used about 1/4 of it. Saved the rest for little frags or for another tank.

I did a few variations and came up with this at the end:

Next I moved the rocks, forgot what the aquascape was exactly, added some live sand, rearranged the rock, let it settle for a day or 2 and let the system run. After all that I added a bottle of Bio Spira let it run for about 2 hours and picked up 2 simple clown from the LFS.

I really like the simple clowns and coming back into the hobby to see the crazy clowns out there now 'frostbite' this and 'snowball' that takes away from the natural look for me to be honest.

I put my tank in my basement next to our stairs and use the under the stairs as my equipment room.
I have RODI line going in there, all electronics, mixed water for DOSn my water changes, etc .. I still have a bit of cable management to deal with and adding a Cyberpower UPS I had laying around so I'm going to get to that and maybe change some things up who knows but I would like the equipment room to be manageable mainly .. doesn't need to be perfect like the DT though.

So at this point I have the 2 clowns, a running MP10, Mighty Pro return pump, Apex all setup and a Hydra 26 HD running. I waited about 1 week and started adding corals after water came back good. I even had an ammonia badge in there (and still do actually) just to watch and then....

Great right?!

That was a pain .. either a mix of dino/diatom, who knows now but it wasn't great. It was going to happen and die like all new tanks I suspected. At that point I had a hammer, duncan, xeina, stylophora, 2 clowns and cleanup crew (6 blue 2 red leg 2 trochus, 6 astrea, 6 cerith snails). My xeina is still fighting the effects of it sticking to it and it's not even pulsing anymore .. didn't stop it from doubling in size though.

I took my lighting schedule down to about 4 hours of light a day for 4 days and that basically did the trick.

Now I have that gone and have added some gsp coral, monti cap, a plate coral (with like 4 mouths??) zoa, cleaner shrimp, a green clown goby and lost 3 astrea for their shells. I even added blank shells for the hermit crabs and they weren't good enough!

I'm going to wait on adding any more in about a month or so (maybe

) and my next focus is going to seeding more coralline algae I think, but I'd love some ideas of what next!

I'll be keeping this going too and adding more detail on some specifics of my setup, answering any questions, pics of new things or updates and if you'd like to see anything or better pictures of the setup just let me know too.

Here's some of what I'm working with as of now
(I need to get a camera filter for my phone, where??)
Duncan (idk)

Good 'ol GSP. I fragged it and glued that piece on the back low so it will grow up eventually

This one is on a shell I hope a hermit will wear one day

Plate. Can you see the 3 dots on the right and 1 on the left?

Hammer

Green Monti Cap .. My clown looks like it's sad, but it's just the other one's fin.

Mint Stylophora?

Hitchhiker mushroom of some kind

JumboShrimp · Jul 7, 2019

What has your time-frame been on all of that, from water in the tank, onward? Looks like you’re having a blast getting back in to the hobby; also seems as you are going a break-neck speed (?) Best wishes!

DomiKasReef · Jul 7, 2019

JumboShrimp said:
What has your time-frame been on all of that

You're right on with the break neck speeds comment. This has been setup for about a 7 weeks, from water in tank to now.

After initial water in the tank and adding the bio spira, I basically let it sit for a week. During that time I was surprised to see, from what I could tell, the tank cycle and stabilize. I added 5280 Pods from Algae Barn feeding them phyto (still to this day) and now that population is everywhere. So far so good.

DomiKasReef · Jul 7, 2019

I'll dive into my AIO sump area and mostly focus on my ATK setup.
1st, there's not a bunch of room back there in the AIOs for all the little gadgets obviously. I have quite a bit of things back there now too.

Things I have back there.
Neptune Systems probe holder with probes
Cobalt 100w heater (kind of tall but good)
Mighty Jet 326 GPH return pump.
2 lines for DOS auto water changes (which I haven't used much so far).
Mounting bracket for Hydra26
ATK
NuvoSkim Desktop skimmer
KW300 reactor.
and the filter sock and basket with the tank.

Pretty crowded but it fits just fine and works.
One thing I wasn't very sure about is what to do in the sump back there.
here's an image of it if you're not familiar. In the return area I felt that the left and right sides were wasted so I added some bio blocks and rock rubble in there. Not overly packing the area, but it's there on the left and right. Not sure if I was suppose to do that but it seems to be fine for now. Might have to do a good cleaning later, but I'm ok with that.

My ATK is what I want to cover more though. It sits right on top of the Y fitting from the return pump on the nuvo 20, providing me with a water level down about an inch from my other chambers. I had to remove the float fall back on the ATK (which is a 3rd failsafe) for the nano application but that's fine.
It's an exact tight fit in the return area. No issues with sensors and such either. I've been watching them closely for salt buildup or odd on/off sequences in my Apex logs. It's pretty much running like clockwork turning on for about 4 seconds every hour. I could possibly change that to be longer though. For the ATO lines I actually have this running directly from the RODI line to 2 solenoids. I'm not concerned about TDS creep at all. The 2nd one is just a redundant failsafe in the event one sticks open. All working famously so far as well.

flchamp89 · Jul 7, 2019

Looks killer. Welcome to the Nuvo club. Looking forward to watching your reef develop.

DomiKasReef · Jul 18, 2019

Got some more coral yesterday and added that to the tank. Rastas, Jurassic Park, Nanobytes and a nice purple torch head. Changed some things up too to get the tank to a more final growth coverage state. Got my torch where I wanted it, zoa garden area. Moved the GSP to the back wall low so it'll grow up. I really need some better gel filters for using my iPhone to take pics too.

So that was pretty cool .. all of em opened up same day too. Then I found my little green clown goby guy chilling on the monti cap where he never goes. So he's getting more comfortable it seems.

Seeing some small purple dots on the rock faces now too so I'm assuming some coralline is coming around the corner while everything is mostly having a green dusting on it.

I also redid the custom caddy in the nuvo to be a mini refugium with chaeto in it. I added the cheatomax light on the back of the tank reverse light cycle, and actually into the day cycle 1hour in the am and starting 1hr before lights out in the pm.

Started back on the auto water changes using my DOS. Doing about 1600ml a day since last week.

Still lower side pH issues.
Tank Levels:
PO4: 0.00
NO3: 0 - .25 last I checked a week ago and have had DOS working since.
Alk: 9.5
Cal: 430
Mg: 1480 (high side?)
pH 7.78 ~ 7.92
RODI TDS: 0

I recalibrated my pH probe to double check.
I feel like I've done every thing too. CO2 Scrubber, mini refugium, added an air stone in the sump and even extra plants in the room.
Opening the windows in the house does put it back to about 8.1 highest.

Next I'm going to try an outside line to my IM NuvoSkim desktop skimmer, but I feel that will be a waste since it's so small and won't pull air from the long run needed. We shall see.

Hemmdog · Jul 18, 2019

DomiKasReef said:
Just getting back into the hobby and I have setup a new Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 20 Pro!
I gotta say the quality of the tank is great and I'm really happy with it. Also grabbed the APS black stand.

I like the stand, it's light and looks nice, but I have to say putting it together was not very straight forward. It took me a bit of time and fine tuning just to get the stand square. They could have done a better job and added exact placement notches for the hardware to tighten, making squaring it up a lot easier. Overall though, I'm extremely happy with the quality of both.

I've been out of the hobby for a long time so all the great new toys available are fun (and dangerous on the wallet) to see.
I kind of went all "reefer madness" with the setup.
Apex, ATK, DOS, WXM, MP10, and more I'll get into later.

I wanted to start clean so I started with some AQUAMAXX ECO-ROCK DRY LIVE ROCK.
Really love the stuff. It was easy to work with, lots of little holes, pieces hook to each other very well and looks great to me too. Breaking it up was a little tough at times, but nothing a sledge hammer can't handle!

I initially got 25lbs and used about 1/4 of it. Saved the rest for little frags or for another tank.

I did a few variations and came up with this at the end:

Next I moved the rocks, forgot what the aquascape was exactly, added some live sand, rearranged the rock, let it settle for a day or 2 and let the system run. After all that I added a bottle of Bio Spira let it run for about 2 hours and picked up 2 simple clown from the LFS.

I really like the simple clowns and coming back into the hobby to see the crazy clowns out there now 'frostbite' this and 'snowball' that takes away from the natural look for me to be honest.

I put my tank in my basement next to our stairs and use the under the stairs as my equipment room.
I have RODI line going in there, all electronics, mixed water for DOSn my water changes, etc .. I still have a bit of cable management to deal with and adding a Cyberpower UPS I had laying around so I'm going to get to that and maybe change some things up who knows but I would like the equipment room to be manageable mainly .. doesn't need to be perfect like the DT though.

So at this point I have the 2 clowns, a running MP10, Mighty Pro return pump, Apex all setup and a Hydra 26 HD running. I waited about 1 week and started adding corals after water came back good. I even had an ammonia badge in there (and still do actually) just to watch and then....

Great right?!

That was a pain .. either a mix of dino/diatom, who knows now but it wasn't great. It was going to happen and die like all new tanks I suspected. At that point I had a hammer, duncan, xeina, stylophora, 2 clowns and cleanup crew (6 blue 2 red leg 2 trochus, 6 astrea, 6 cerith snails). My xeina is still fighting the effects of it sticking to it and it's not even pulsing anymore .. didn't stop it from doubling in size though.

I took my lighting schedule down to about 4 hours of light a day for 4 days and that basically did the trick.

Now I have that gone and have added some gsp coral, monti cap, a plate coral (with like 4 mouths??) zoa, cleaner shrimp, a green clown goby and lost 3 astrea for their shells. I even added blank shells for the hermit crabs and they weren't good enough!

I'm going to wait on adding any more in about a month or so (maybe ) and my next focus is going to seeding more coralline algae I think, but I'd love some ideas of what next!

I'll be keeping this going too and adding more detail on some specifics of my setup, answering any questions, pics of new things or updates and if you'd like to see anything or better pictures of the setup just let me know too.

Here's some of what I'm working with as of now
(I need to get a camera filter for my phone, where??)
Duncan (idk)

Good 'ol GSP. I fragged it and glued that piece on the back low so it will grow up eventually

This one is on a shell I hope a hermit will wear one day

Plate. Can you see the 3 dots on the right and 1 on the left?

Hammer

Green Monti Cap .. My clown looks like it's sad, but it's just the other one's fin.

Mint Stylophora?

Hitchhiker mushroom of some kind

The thing you said was a plate is a Lithophyllon undulatum ; it needs to be mounted on your rocks.

Sweet setup !

DomiKasReef · Jul 18, 2019

Hemmdog said:
The thing you said was a plate is a Lithophyllon undulatum

Thanks @Hemmdog! I really do like that in the sand though. Its spot is still temporary and I want to remove it from it's plug and put it on a like 3-4" disk or a nice flat-ish rock I can find/make from my leftover rock. I eventually plan to place it in front of that arch where all the small frags are currently.

Austin Byers · Jul 19, 2019

Nice aquascpe. I’m jealous of people that are that good at it

DomiKasReef · Jul 19, 2019

Austin Byers said:
Nice aquascpe. I’m jealous of people that are that good at it

Thanks! 1st person to say! I was starting to think people didn't like it lol.
I wouldn't say I am good at it but I'll definitely take it

I did go through a few different ones but all in all it took about 20 minutes, so not much thought went into it.
I would maybe change the left cave if I did it again to be a larger flow through .. but it's not bad.

I did have other attempts too, but this one just popped.

DomiKasReef · Jul 24, 2019

I think green clown goby is dead

.. I didn't see him once today, even during feeding and he was there last night .. nowhere to be found either. floor, sump area or in the rock from what I can tell. The search continues.

DomiKasReef · Jul 25, 2019

Nevermind! Found the little guy in the sump area return chamber in one of the back corners. What a PAIN to catch him!

DomiKasReef · Oct 5, 2019

I'm at about 4 months in on this tank now. Really loving it a lot. Getting good growth on things and added new ones. It's nice and stocked with what I want to continue to grow out for now and pretty stable. I had low pH issues from the beginning being in the basement, but I made a C02 scrubber for it and it is working pretty great so far. So for the most part now I'm just doing regular maintenance and feeding. I'll probably do some adjusting and here and there but I mostly I'm at the final place where we'll just watch it grow from here!

GSP on the back wall doubled since, Duncan grew out 5 additional heads, Xenia like quadrupled too.

DomiKasReef · Feb 13, 2020

Going on about 9 months now. Every thing is growing a bunch and healthy. I had GSP growing out of the tank and had to cut it up, monti cap had to get chopped, started to frag a few polyps of rastas, utter chaos and a stick of setosa. Duncan has 10 heads now too, kind of growing fast it seems. Had a little brown algae bloom but cut back on feeding about 3 months ago and haven't had to do a manual water change since. (auto daily changes still happen though).

(old dirty pic and blue) .. I'll get after 'surgery' photos up later.

JumboShrimp · Feb 13, 2020

Some really nice pieces to be proud of!

DomiKasReef · Feb 14, 2020

JumboShrimp said:
Some really nice pieces to be proud of!

Thank you! I’m going to work towards replacing some here and there with different pieces eventually. I need to play with my lights some first. I noticed the acro getting a little brown.