IM 100 EXT, the one and only

[MakingMistakes]

Ok, so a little about me. In my 40's had a reef tank in my 20's while in school and poor. Eventually I realized with the lack of money and the constant moving maybe a Reef Tank isnt for me. So, I had the tank re-homed and have been wanting to get back into ever since. Now older and established with a permanent home it is the time.

Prior tank I did a lot by hand, customizing the sump making a separate refugium, lots of plumbing, lots of wiring, lots of floods, I decided to go another way this time and ordered the RED SEA REEFER MAX 250 LETS F GO BABY!! I went online and read some forums about Red Sea... I CANCELLED MY ORDER for the RED SEA REEFER MAX 250!!!
I did a lot more research and order an IM 100 EXT Reef Ready, LFG BABY!!!

Here we begin.

Tank IM100EXT
Sump The RFS39 sump
Mighty Jet XL for the return
Plan to eventually run 2 MP40's for circulation

Lighting:
Straton X x2 wait I see 2 xr30 g4 pros on ebay in box never used for 350$ each with mounts, yeah baby!
May add on some blades or an additional xr30 if I feel it needs it

In the sump
Going to try these filter balls IM makes for now
Maxspect SK400 - apparently things have changed and for a skimmer under 1000$ no one seems to know which one is any good now, used to just be bubble magus
Cheatomax grow light - its cheap and I already had the bracket, will probably upgrade to a blade or kessil tuna sun eventually
Tunze ATO - with resevoir down in the Utility room below the tank.

Controller
Neptune APEX
Power station
Many DOs dosing pumps, they are pretty cheap on ebay used and Im also going to be using them to run drip lines to plants around the room.

Dosing
Not sure yet, will run kalk in the ATO for now
Then its triton vs all for reef at the beginning

Ocean direct sand in the bottom and about 80 lbs of dry rock.

Utility room - thats right boys, this man has stepped into the big boys world, I have a whole utility room to use. I had my garage doors switched to vertical lift and have those lifting storage racks going in so I will have the whole room to myself to play in.
Planning on doing a sizable tank for constant water changes.
A nice quarantine tank or two as well.
Possibly a second controller to run everything in there.
A drain, oh yeah, I have a drain I can just run all the crap to, its all going down the big hole in the floor from now on. No more of all the crap I used to have to do with my old tank.

Currently I have the tank up and cycling right now, just working on getting the mess of wires cleaned up and in a state that i can look at without needing a vomit bag.

 

[Fish Fan]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

#WelcometoR2R

Looks like a great build, I'll be following along to see this progress

Good luck with your build!

 

[MakingMistakes]

Goals:
I think it is important to have certain goals in mind before starting a tank and plan in a way to achieve those goals.

1. As hands off as possible, robust monitoring and backup systems. Redundancy, I want a backup for everything. Being a poor reefer in the past didn't allow for much of any monitoring or control, I am going to take full advantage now.
2. Radianthus Magnifica, I want my magnificent anemone! The tank will is being designed to make this anemone happy. It will go in before any coral and probably only after I get a happy bubble tip thriving. I am reading everything I can find on this anemone. Quarantine tank will be setup with good lighting and flow and plenty of antibiotics when it arrives. Once it is in the tank and thriving I will add other corals.
3. Leaning SPS dominant, personally kind of love the softies but I am forced in this direction because of my Magnificent, which is essentially an SPS as far as requirements goes. I hope to find ways to sneak as many softies around the bottom of the tank as I can.
4. No Aiptasia, minimal pests. My coral quarantine methods will be extensive and extreme. If i see anything I don't like, I don't care what I paid its going in the trash. If a fish or invert has a reputation for eating Aiptasia you will find it in my tank.
5. If I can see it with my eyes and I didn't put it in the tank it dies.
6. Workers, previously I bought fish for their looks, that will be minimized, my fish are going in to work for me. This will be like a farm, everything has a job to do and if it isn't doing its job it will be going to a new home.
7. I want to be able to feed a lot. Heavy feeding allows for happy fish and happy reefers. Feeding is fun. So will need a robust system to get all that food back out, filter rollers, a good sized skimmer a large clean up crew, a lot of copepods and a thriving biome.

Cycling update:
Well turbo start hasn't been so turbo for me. Neither was the 2 bottles of PNS or the microbacter. Ammonia is slowy creeping down.

Gear:
I looked a few months back and couldn't find any option for a filter roller in my IM RFS39 sump. Not sure how I missed it but they do have the 4 inch filter cup ones. I found the Klir and nature dimensions yesterday. I decided I didn't really need it right now until I have some fish to feed. I was able to make it about 6 hours before I ordered them.

2 of the N-Clear M Fleece Roller Filters are on the way.

I wanted to throw in a shout out to my son who crawled up and through a very narrow gap in the basement ceiling, through choking dust and sharp metal to retrieve the end of the tube that is allowing me to run all my wires and more tubes to the basement.

 

[Head-High and Glassy]

Love your manifesto. Have the same tank setup since February, but not with your clarity of vision.

 

[ColoradoReeferman]

I was horrified reading the beginning. So glad to hear you switched to IM.

 

[MakingMistakes]

I was horrified reading the beginning. So glad to hear you switched to IM.

The stories are horrifying, I have to thank AI for compiling it all and essentially saying it’s going to fail. They have dug themselves into one heck of a hole. “Catastrophic tank failure” that one did it for me, I’m not trying to recreate a Hollywood film in my dining room.

 

[MakingMistakes]

Love your manifesto. Have the same tank setup since February, but not with your clarity of vision.

Gotta have a vision, my last tank taught me that. It simplifies everything and will save a tone of money. Buying an underpowered skimmer or lights will not save you money if you end up replacing them in a year and in fact will make you waste a lot of money.

 

[MakingMistakes]

Updates:

Picked up a par meter cheap from Amazon about 120$. It seems to worked. Played with the X30’s turned them all the way up and got 780! On the rocks, dang those 4th gen’s can cook. Also
Just excited to have my own par meter cheap.

Cycle is nearing completion and the algae is growing. That means the CUC is on the way!

Copepods, I’ve dumped 7 jars from algae barn and have 8 more on the way. Plus another 16oz I got from reef by Steele, I didn’t probably need these but I got the CUC from them so I couldn’t help myself.

I ordered them yesterday and had some friends over for drinks around the tank last night. We noticed I have pods everywhere when we sit and watch. So, I may not have needed to order more but no worries, I can dose extra phyto. Friends hadn’t seen a reef tank before and were mesmerized as I taught them all about it.

Skimmer is on and was trying to produce some good skimmate, but lost it. Needs to be dialed in but it was promising.

Shopping list:
More powerful light for refugium, after seeing the output from my radions, I think I need something more competitive probably Kessil a360 tuna sun.

One more mp40, it’s crazy to see the difference flow makes even for algae, right side of tank is covered, left side is barren.

Auto water change tank is ordered, but need to get junk out of room to make space.

Quarantine tanks and gear.

 

[nickng]

Goals:
I think it is important to have certain goals in mind before starting a tank and plan in a way to achieve those goals.

1. As hands off as possible, robust monitoring and backup systems. Redundancy, I want a backup for everything. Being a poor reefer in the past didn't allow for much of any monitoring or control, I am going to take full advantage now.
2. Radianthus Magnifica, I want my magnificent anemone! The tank will is being designed to make this anemone happy. It will go in before any coral and probably only after I get a happy bubble tip thriving. I am reading everything I can find on this anemone. Quarantine tank will be setup with good lighting and flow and plenty of antibiotics when it arrives. Once it is in the tank and thriving I will add other corals.
3. Leaning SPS dominant, personally kind of love the softies but I am forced in this direction because of my Magnificent, which is essentially an SPS as far as requirements goes. I hope to find ways to sneak as many softies around the bottom of the tank as I can.
4. No Aiptasia, minimal pests. My coral quarantine methods will be extensive and extreme. If i see anything I don't like, I don't care what I paid its going in the trash. If a fish or invert has a reputation for eating Aiptasia you will find it in my tank.
5. If I can see it with my eyes and I didn't put it in the tank it dies.
6. Workers, previously I bought fish for their looks, that will be minimized, my fish are going in to work for me. This will be like a farm, everything has a job to do and if it isn't doing its job it will be going to a new home.
7. I want to be able to feed a lot. Heavy feeding allows for happy fish and happy reefers. Feeding is fun. So will need a robust system to get all that food back out, filter rollers, a good sized skimmer a large clean up crew, a lot of copepods and a thriving biome.

Cycling update:
Well turbo start hasn't been so turbo for me. Neither was the 2 bottles of PNS or the microbacter. Ammonia is slowy creeping down.

Gear:
I looked a few months back and couldn't find any option for a filter roller in my IM RFS39 sump. Not sure how I missed it but they do have the 4 inch filter cup ones. I found the Klir and nature dimensions yesterday. I decided I didn't really need it right now until I have some fish to feed. I was able to make it about 6 hours before I ordered them.

2 of the N-Clear M Fleece Roller Filters are on the way.

I wanted to throw in a shout out to my son who crawled up and through a very narrow gap in the basement ceiling, through choking dust and sharp metal to retrieve the end of the tube that is allowing me to run all my wires and more tubes to the basement.

The Fiji cube ARF20 will fit in the filter sock section of the RFS39. It will only need a set of diy extension plates to raise the fleece roller mechanism. I’ve used it for close to 2 years with no issues. For dimensions of the plates check my build thread

 

[JumboShrimp]

Excellent choice in tanks. Enjoy the ride!

 

[X-37B]

Nice start! I have 3 IM ext systems.

 

[MakingMistakes]

Nice start! I have 3 IM ext systems.

I can see why the build quality is amazing. I don’t know why I never considered and external overflow before, I think I had some stupid assumptions about them being inferior.

I will definitely be IM everything from now on.

May even use the nanos for quarantines, they are a pretty good deal for on 100$

Thanks for coming along.

 

[X-37B]

I can see why the build quality is amazing. I don’t know why I never considered and external overflow before, I think I had some stupid assumptions about them being inferior.

I will definitely be IM everything from now on.

May even use the nanos for quarantines, they are a pretty good deal for on 100$

Thanks for coming along.

My ext 170, ext 112, and behind an ext 50.

Back wall of the ext 50.

Im 15

 

[MakingMistakes]

My ext 170, ext 112, and behind an ext 50.

Back wall of the ext 50.

Im 15

dang you are a hardcore IM fanboy, love the tanks. Wish they made a stand for the nanos.

The stand and sump are actually what I am most impressed with.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[JumboShrimp]

Soooo... does that photo mean that your wife gave up a living room with a fireplace so that you could have a room all to your fish? If so, Award-time!

 

[MakingMistakes]

Update on my mistakes so far

1. Put the ato level sensor below the pump, not sure where my head was at there.
2. Air in the tank so I fixed the issue, but got annoyed by the constant clicking on and off of the circuit as the ato refilled covered the switch then pump dropped it low enough to trigger I again. So I turned it off while it refilled.
3. Forgot to turn it back on and came home to air in the tank again, turned it on.
4. Because of those mistakes the temp sensor came into 72 degree air and turned on the heater, by the time the sensor was back in the water the tank was up to 83.
5. Read algae barn ships Monday- Wednesday but my brain interpreted that to mean if I order Tuesday it won’t ship to Monday. So I got my chaeto and pods without water even in my sump yet.
6. More to come

 

[MakingMistakes]

Soooo... does that photo mean that your wife gave up a living room with a fireplace so that you could have a room all to your fish? If so, Award-time!

In fact yes, I was going to update on that at some point. The tank is in our dining room. After having the tank and putting in some plants she has agreed we never use the table. So we are going to move the table out near our kitchen and make the room into a cozy speak easy type setting. Very excited. Time for wainscoting and I’ll have a carpenter do built in/ bar area in the back. Needs a cozy leather couch too.

Since I’ll have water reservoirs and dosing pumps available I’ll also run some drip lines for all the plants.

 

[X-37B]

dang you are a hardcore IM fanboy, love the tanks. Wish they made a stand for the nanos.

The stand and sump are actually what I am most impressed with.

Yea after many systems over the years these are quality full systems. Sumps are well thought out. The overflow section for the heater is quite small and I have not touched it in 2 years but thats about my only complaint.
External overflow is so much better than the old corner and center ones. I would never have an in box overflow if I was buying a new system today.
Enjoy! Start a build thread so you can document and we can follow.
Dont forget to feed your fish, lol.

 

[MakingMistakes]

Update:
ND fleece rollers are in and functioning. They are loud so now planning on making a custom cover for the top of the sump and some custom lower covers around the bases. Main source of sound seems to be the water running around them so making the flow smoother should fix most of it.

So either finally pic up CAD and 3D print them or good old fashioned cardboard-plywood-router acrylic. 3D printing would be the more satisfying.

Got some CUC and fish now that my cycle is complete. 3 chromis and my goby shrimp pair.

CUC are massacring my algae, I tried extending my light cycle and increased my PAR but it’s not keeping up. Attempting to overfeed. Strange situation for me doing what I can to get nuisance algae growing. Probably need to turn off my filter rollers for now. May need to dose nitrate and phosphate or these poor guys are going to starve.

Beginning planning for my mixing station and gathering materials. Room should be tall enough for a gravity system significantly reducing cost and complexity.