Skibi's IM 200 EXT Upgrade Build!

[Skibi]

The time has come to join the big boys! Finally upgrading from the Red Sea Reefer 250 (65 gallon) due to the infamous front pane of glass starting to separate. Placed my order for a Innovative Marine 200 EXT complete reef system! Ordered on March 21 and arrived on March 30th! One of the main reasons with going with the bigger one was that it was in stock and like they always say bigger is better!

I will be posting as many updates as i can and my journey along the way learned alot so far and hope others can learn something from me or my mistakes. I am still working on the rockscape right now but tank is up and on the stand I've taken pictures of everything so far and will be updating the build thread here shortly!

 

[Skibi]

Receiving the tank from the shipper was a piece of cake they even put it in the garage for me!

 

[Skibi]

Little background of where the tank is going/located. I live in a 2 story house with a basement and have a perfect spot in my family room that way everyone can enjoy the tank. I want to show people how cool it is and my kids love looking at the current tank. But when doing some math I’m looking at close to 3000 pounds on my floor. So with the help of an engineer came up with a plan to support the floor and tank from the basement.

The plan was to sister the joist and also add a Steele I Beam with 2 supporting poles. The good thing going for me the wall it’s going against is a foundation wall in my basement.

Took 3 people to lift the beam but other than that not to hard. I did learn how to take apart my duct as it was the only way to be able to sister the joist and screw them in.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Skibi]

Next up uncrating the sump,stand and tank. Gotta give it to IM the packing is crazy good never thought I’d be in amazement of how things were packed and protected but here we are lol. Only had a small damage on one of the cups in the sump contacted customer support and everything was good!

 

[Skibi]

The stand was pretty straight forward 2 of the sides were completely put together only had one small issue was that it was racked(tilting to one side) so I loosed the cross bracers gave it a persuasion push and doubled checked corner to corner with tape measure and everything was good.

The whole stand is all aluminum like that a lot looks really nice!

 

[Skibi]

Moving the tank I thought was going to be easy…..wrong. Called a local moving company and they wanted $900 to move just the tank from my garage to my family room less than 50 ft and only 1 step. So I said no thank you then called a LFS they said sure can probably do it for 150-250 that was more reasonable and they said they would let me know later in the week after they talked to the team.

After 5 days I called them back and was then told they could no longer do it they didn’t have the personal to move such a big tank…..
The dimension of the tank are 70Lx30Wx21H which roughly converts to 650 pounds all glass with euro bracing it’s not light!

So I finally decided to call some friends and family and we were going to do this! Rented an industrial furniture dolly that could hold 1000pounds got 2 8 8invh suction cups also got a piano/organ dolley.

So with 6 people and about an hour we were able to move it in turns out the only equipment we really used was the suction cups would recommend 4. It was just way easier to brute force carry it than deal with the dolley and what not. Had 2 people on each end and then a 2x4 in the middle that 2 more people could help lift on.

 

[Skibi]

It took more time talking about everything and making sure we had a plan then it did to actually move the tank. Did not want to break this thing and everyone was a little nervous also.

 

[NikkiPotnick]

Awesome, what are the stocking plans?

I am in the middle of IM 112 lagoon build myself. I am bringing over two larger rocks with corals from a 50 gallon so aqua scaping has kind of been difficult to plan.

 

[Skibi]

Tangs! Always wanted a couple finally have a tank i can put them in going to do some wrasses too though. Plan on doing a mixed reeef mainly LPS few SPS and few softies like some zoas and mushrooms done the leather coral never again stuff grows like crazy and cant be killed off lol. Some of my coral and inverts will move over once i get this thing cycled also have a few lps that i hope to transfer over also!

Will def be going with sand plan on doing ocean direct then seeding with a couple pounds from tampa bay. Will also be buying some of there live rock to put in the sump as well. I hope to run the tank and seed it and that for 2 months or so just depends how bad or if my current tank pops a leak before then or not.

 

[NikkiPotnick]

Tangs! Always wanted a couple finally have a tank i can put them in going to do some wrasses too though. Plan on doing a mixed reeef mainly LPS few SPS and few softies like some zoas and mushrooms done the leather coral never again stuff grows like crazy and cant be killed off lol. Some of my coral and inverts will move over once i get this thing cycled also have a few lps that i hope to transfer over also!

Will def be going with sand plan on doing ocean direct then seeding with a couple pounds from tampa bay. Will also be buying some of there live rock to put in the sump as well. I hope to run the tank and seed it and that for 2 months or so just depends how bad or if my current tank pops a leak before then or not.

Get a tomini, awesome little dudes.

Have you bought live rock from tampa bay rock before? I kind of want to buy a few pieces for the middle of my tank. I see they have a 20 pound min order though. Any pests to worry about?

 

[Skibi]

Not yet this would be my first time buying from them and doing the air cargo never done that before either lol. Be an all new experience but have heard so many good things and in my last tank i dealt with dinos so trying to do everything i can to avoid that so going to try this route this time.

 

[NikkiPotnick]

Not yet this would be my first time buying from them and doing the air cargo never done that before either lol. Be an all new experience but have heard so many good things and in my last tank i dealt with dinos so trying to do everything i can to avoid that so going to try this route this time.

Dinos are brutal...dealt with it in my last tank about 6 months in. No fun. Good luck!

 

[Skibi]

Got the plumbing all done I went with IM complete reef system so all the plumbing came pre glued oh hindsight might of done something different. I’m not liking that they centered the sump in the stand. Would have much preferred it off to one side so I could fit my ato in. Still deciding if ima cut the pipes apart and move it where I want it or not.

 

[Skibi]

Starting to mess with aqua scape now. I took the inside dimensions of the tank and laid it out door so that way I could visualize everything. This is what I’ve got so far probably be about 80 pounds or so of rock when done.

 

[Skibi]

Got some stuff super glued together now. Going back and epoxying all the joints then I will cement them too. After that I’ll go back and see if there’s anything should add or leave it how it is on the height.

 

[Skibi]

 

[tritonpower]

Got the plumbing all done I went with IM complete reef system so all the plumbing came pre glued oh hindsight might of done something different. I’m not liking that they centered the sump in the stand. Would have much preferred it off to one side so I could fit my ato in. Still deciding if ima cut the pipes apart and move it where I want it or not.

You could just put a large plastic container as your ATO in your laundry room behind the tank and drill through the wall for the ATO tube. Then you rarely need to fill the ATO

 

[Skibi]

Ya that’s a thought just my laundry room isn’t that big unfortunately my garage is behind that wall which is still and option to think about thanks!

 

[tritonpower]

Ya that’s a thought just my laundry room isn’t that big unfortunately my garage is behind that wall which is still and option to think about thanks!

I ended up with a double ATO kind of. I have a long tube running from garage main RO container to my ATO container near my tank that is run by a versa pump and activated by a hydros sensor in my ATO container. I then have a traditional tunze sensor in my tank that runs a normal ATO pump. Since I run a kalk stirrer it does not turn on often. With this system I never even think about my ATO other then filling my large main RO container once a month or so. It has worked out great. Using a similar method you could use a somewhat small ATO container (which could be any container) in the laundry room as your ATO container and have it auto filled. Minimizing work is key in this hobby.