IM 100G Shallow Peninsula Build

[AKay3600]

The tank is looking really good so far!! Can't help but think what the cat is going to thank once the tank has more aquatic life in it

Thanks! They actually won't care at all! This is a tank upgrade and when the other tank was up they never looked at it. I currently have the fish in a holding tank on the floor and I catch them watching the fish a little bit now that it's at their level but still not too much interest.

Did catch the other cat, Mochi, watching them yesterday though!

 

[Rhapsody in Blue Reef]

Nice scape!

 

[Ken Goldsmith]

Hey, my name is Andy and this the new thread for my new build, a Innovative Marine 100G INT Peninsula, woo! Couldn't resist the nice sale they had going on the other week. The beauty arrived today and from what I can tell is in great condition, felt like opening the Ark of the Covenant. I currently have a Red Sea Reefer 250 that I am upgrading from but also doing a restart at the same time. Anyway here she is along with my current plans for equipment!

Equipment:
Tank - Innovative Marine 100INT Peninsula - 47.2" x 30" x16.1"
Stand - Innovative Marine APS
Sump - Fiji Cube 24"
Lights - T5 Hybrid (2 Coral Plus, 2 Blue Plus) with 2 Radion XR15 G6s
Return - Maxspect Jump 6K
Flow - 2x Nero 5s, Jebao PP4
Skimmer - Bubble Magus Z8
Heaters - Ink Bird Controller w/ 2 Eheim 150W heaters.
Refugium Light - IM CheatoMax Light
Dosing - 2 Kamoer doing pumps; All for Reef and Kalk
ATO - Hydor ATO, IM 5 gallon Reservoir

Hi Andy, congrats on your new IM aquarium. I was looking at the 100 EXT but didn't want a 4' aquarium. Therefore, next week I should receive a 112 EXT- Lagoon. I was just really struck with the square footprint of the tank. Itis really 3-D. I am getting an area ready in my office at home for the aquarium. I had a 120 gallon reef aquarium in the living room about 20 years ago and just broke it down about 3 months ago. I have to admit that I made mistakes on the setup of the aquarium. Meaning that the aquarium ruined part of the floor and wall where the aquarium sat. Saltwater is a nasty thing. For this aquarium, it is going on a low platform away from the floor and I have protections from the wall as well. Hey, good luck setting it up. Let me know how it goes.

Ken Goldsmith

 

[AKay3600]

Hi Andy, congrats on your new IM aquarium. I was looking at the 100 EXT but didn't want a 4' aquarium. Therefore, next week I should receive a 112 EXT- Lagoon. I was just really struck with the square footprint of the tank. Itis really 3-D. I am getting an area ready in my office at home for the aquarium. I had a 120 gallon reef aquarium in the living room about 20 years ago and just broke it down about 3 months ago. I have to admit that I made mistakes on the setup of the aquarium. Meaning that the aquarium ruined part of the floor and wall where the aquarium sat. Saltwater is a nasty thing. For this aquarium, it is going on a low platform away from the floor and I have protections from the wall as well. Hey, good luck setting it up. Let me know how it goes.

Ken Goldsmith

Thanks Ken! I really looked at the 112 as well, great looking tank! Sounds like you have a good idea of what your plans are for the tank, you'll need to get a build thread going so we can follow along!

 

[AKay3600]

Well in the last week I have added even more corals to the tank, moved some snails and crabs over as well as bought some snails and a conch. After about 3 days of some light diatoms on the rock and sand I haven't seen any for at least 4 days now. The only algae in the tank so far is just little bits attached to frag plugs or on the base of some corals.

I've actually tossed in some algae wafers to feed everyone.

I've been adding bacteria pretty much constantly. I'm dosing microbacter 7 daily and adding PNS Pro Bio every few days. For each I do about half the dosage on the bottle.

I've also been dosing some live phyto every other day or so and once a week I've been adding AF Life Source mud.

The plan is to add the clownfish this weekend and then give it a few more days before adding anyone else. The corals all are looking great so far, so I'm happy with that!

So this mix of dry rock and dry sand with some seeded media and corals from the old system, as well as a ton of bacteria is off to a ood start. Keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't all blow up in my face!

 

[Espino963]

I still regret not getting this tank over my Reefer 650. My next tank will be a similar tank but on steroids.

 

[AKay3600]

Been a couple weeks since my last update so here we go. The tank is still doing great! My local LFS had a big anniversary sale and having a good chunk of credit at the store I decided to pick up some new corals. I have no self control haha

I picked up 3 Zoa frags, a 3 different polyp Acan, a nice frag of Birds of Paradise, a Green Goniopor, 2 New Rock Flowers aaaannnnddd a Joker Torch. I really don't care about names at all, just thought it looked cool with purple tentacles and a neon green center. Unfortunately my other bright green torch is on it's way out. It started looking rough in the holding tank and has just continued to decline, really the only coral not to make it through the transfer process. Oh I also got a nice bunch of dragons breath algae for the display.


The other day I moved the 2 clowns into the display by catching them while they slept. The next day I was able to catch the tail spot blenny easily so I moved him over as well. All 3 seem fine but for sure are a bit shy at the moment and only really eat what floats to them. They should come around soon I imagine. I also moved both Nero pumps from the side of the sides of the overflow to the middle section. With them along the edge and the returns up the middle I couldn't stop build up on the far end water surface. Moving them to the middle I now have a top flow over the middle scape with the return flow going under the rock work and down the sides. It helped remove the surface scum so I guess it's what I'll stick with.

My mangroves don't seem to be loving life. All 3 have droopy leaves but otherwise seem healthy. Sounds like a lot of people have their mangroves drop the leaves they came with so we'll see how it turns out. I also added the pink and purple coralline in a bottle package to the tank today for kicks. Just figured it's worth a shot if it can out compete other algae.

The Clowns moved over

New Zoas

New Rock Flowers - of course they have since moved...ugh

New Birds of Paradise

New Joker Torch

 

[AKay3600]

Happy Festivus!

Took some readings today. Everything looks good.

1.026
79.4F
PH - 8.2
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 50
Phosphate - .03
Cal - 460
Mag - 1420
Alk - 8.9

Going to do a 5G water change tomorrow and I'm going to get going on those once a week. Not a large amount but probably what I'll be comfortable doing weekly. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

 

[lubeck]

Looks great. Going to assume the 89 degree temp is a typo.

 

[AKay3600]

Looks great. Going to assume the 89 degree temp is a typo.

Haha oh yeah, good call! The tank is at 79 .

Speaking of temperatures though, it's been below 0 here in the Chicago area the last few days and apparently my garage has gotten very cold. I keep my rodi mounted in the garage and this morning I heard two loud pops coming from there. Went out to find 2 of the rodi canisters exploded! Thankfully I had just topped up my bucket so should be good until I can get them replaced. Going to need a new plan though now hmm.

 

[Petcrazyson]

Everything is looking amazing! When are we getting new fish?

 

[AKay3600]

Everything is looking amazing! When are we getting new fish?

Thanks! Well before any new fish get added I'll be moving over my Purple Dottyback and Melanurus Wrasse. The Coral Beauty is going to get rehomed, he's a jerk. Going to move those after the new year though.

Not totally sure what fish I'll get next though. I want goby/pistol shrimp pair and after that maybe a pair of Bangai Cardinals to live around the mangroves and gorgonians when I get those. The last few fish will be a Mandarin (maybe a pair) one day and either a Yellow Tang or a Fox Face as the "big" fish in the tank. We shall see though!

 

[AKay3600]

Well my Halloween Urchin got some nice expensive meals after moving him over. Caught him eating the Dragons Breath first and now just noticed he's been eating my Mangroves! D'oh!

 

[AKay3600]

I need to do a bigger update as some new corals have made an appearance but for now here is a quick video from yesterday evening. I will get a better update this evening hopefully!

 

[Marckoh]

Oh nice! Do you have a build thread? Been looking for similar builds for awhile ha


Oh I also took a pic with the lights on...surprisingly blue on the camera haha

@AKay3600 did you have those 'useless' looking foam pads to place on the feet? did you use them or level directly on the floor? I just built an APS stand for my 100INT and currently not planning to use them.

 

[AKay3600]

@AKay3600 did you have those 'useless' looking foam pads to place on the feet? did you use them or level directly on the floor? I just built an APS stand for my 100INT and currently not planning to use them.

I believe I did. I ended up popping a few shims under them as well to get it perfectly level though. Probably not really important though.

 

[AKay3600]

Well I'm a late on the update but here we go! Tank is still doing great overall. I did lose my new gonipora, seemed to develop brown jelly. I have also added some gorgonians and a Bubble tip.

I picked up 3 gorgonians from Seahorse Savy. 1 purple frilly, 1 orange spiny and 1 corky sea finger. They all arrived great and were very nice in size. The orange spiny isn't too happy and seems to be struggling a bit but the others seem to be loving life.

I then picked up a rainbow bubble tip so it could kind of move around and find it's happy place before the tank is filled up any more. It seems to have done that and after 3 days of moving around it seems to have settled in under an overhang. If the clowns ever find it, it seems like a nice place for them to start a family .

3 fish in this one

 

[quentin17110]

I have been in the hobby for almost 8 years now. I started with a standard 29 gallon that I ran until May of 2021 when we moved and I upgraded to the Red Sea. I never really wanted this tank but I was able to get it a good deal right at the time we were moving into our first house so I went with it. Anyway, I have been a bit bored with the Reefer as it's dimensions are pretty similar to the same 29 I ran for so long so I was looking for something a bit new and came across this new peninsula. Here are some pics of the 29 and Reefer 250.

The 29

Red Sea Reefer 250

Would love the same tank

 

[AKay3600]

Unrelated to the 100g. I put together a basically "free" tank up on my office / rabbit room. All I bought was a small internal filter to be able to run some filter floss and carbon. It's an Aqueon 15g and is basically 24x13x13. I had an extra bag of sand from the other tank, the rock is all from my older tanks, so is 8 years old. The light and pp-4 powerhead and heater were also extras from the older tank.

The plan is to basically run this as a no maintenance tank. I'll fill it with softies, macro as well as some rock flowers. Then hopefully if I can keep stuff stable would like to make it a sexy shrimp tank with maybe some clown gobies. We shall see!

I'm running the 6 year old Reef Breeders Photon v2 at like 25% but may bump it up once it has some more livestock. Right now it has 2 larger RFAs that I couldn't get off the rock into the 100G and my Urchin.

 

[AKay3600]

Have an order of snails, macro and some corals that may not be making in the 2 day delivery window hmm also took a little video in a corner of the tank. Can spot everyone, minus one. Haven't seen my Purple Dottyback in about a week sadly.