Tony's Nuvo 30G Long AIO
- Nano Build
- Thread starter Tony R.
- Start date
- Tagged users None
SmugglersReef
Community Member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2020
- Messages
- 77
- Reaction score
- 66
Looks better. Keep us posted. Looks great.I got a LARGE tank update on my IM 30g long tank my friends. It hasn't all gone peachy I must admit but I'm finally getting back to a stable enough point where I can post here and update! So hold on to your hats okay!
February-April 2020: All was pretty normal I guess then I left to collect field specimens for my research and had my tank in minimal maintenance mode for a month and returned to a complete take over of GHA! The GHA was proliferating and dying so quickly it must have just destroyed the water chemistry and killed dozens of corals and even a fish.
When I came home I was pretty sure I was going to just throw the dang thing out but instead I opted for the scorched earth policy and wait and see what I could manage. Since I had high surface area ceramic bricks in the sump area and wasn't too worried about biological filtration deficits, I went nuclear and removed all of the afflicted rocks. I then did a large water change every other day until I replaced the total volume. From here, I put in clean dry rock I had from other projects and dumped a bottle of Frtiz bacteria start in so the fish and shrimp wouldn't be too freaky. I chiseled what corals I could salvage and placed them on a plastic frag rack just to see if anybody could survive. This was on March 4th. The following photos are what was left!
All in all the purge of rocks went alright and was surprised to see the surviving corals rebounding. Slowly however I could see that sparse GHA and more abundant diatoms/dinos were encroaching onto the new tank real estate. At this point seeing the brown goop overtake the tank I was really ready to just quit. So I had one more last ditch effort and went super crazy and broke down everything and cleaned it ALL. I vacuumed out the old sand bed and replaced with CaribSea coarse sand and replaced all the temporary rocks with CaribSea Liferock. (Both of which I rinsed for hours on end with hose water then subsequently with RODI water prior to adding). I then dumped in some more Fritz bacteria and essentially didn't touch anything for quite a while until maybe April. To my surprise all of the non-coral critters actually did survive (even a few corals) which was amazing and quite a nice surprise.
April-May 2020: Here's what the initial change over was looking like. A lot cleaner still some dinos and "like new" tank syndrome as I refer to it. I really dig the coarser sand and I used my acquired practical reefing knowledge to make a more functional rockscape. In the spirit of slash and burn I cut my GSP in half to get rid of any gunk on it and also took bone sheers to my pipe organ coral to remove and GHA nested in between the grooves. I also chunked a good portion of the monti for the same reason. From my dino paranoia I also eliminated the cluster of chaeto in my mini refugium.
May 2020:
Return Pump
The tank was looking up and I realized running it a little dirty was actually helping to eliminate the dinos. Seeing a cleaner tank inspired me to sink some time and money into further automating and improving the tank. I replaced the crappy IM Mightyjet pump with the Reef Octopus Varios-2 which I dial comically down with the apex VDM module. The plumbing for the Reef Octopus pump was kind of annoying but in general I purchased a Y barb fitting that had 2x 1/2inch outlets and 1x 3/4 inch inlet. I then used the two 1/2 outlets to connect to the bulkhead outputs of the stock IM 30 and connected the 3/4 inch inlet to the stock barbed Reef Octopus output. It was a pain in the butt since the barbed output did actually taper to 3/4 inch but it would make the connection so tall that it was out of the water in the AIO sump region, therefore I had to ream the 3/4 inch tubing using hot water and a ring mandrel to fit properly and maintain a lower profile. Now the tank has phenomenal flow and is very very quiet.
ATO
I replaced my Hydor ATO sensor and IM hydrofill pump combo with the Apex ATKv2 topoff. Working well so far barring some minor inconveniences. For instance I had to remove the float valve fail safe which I wasn't too happy about. Not only did I lose the fail-safe but removing their float valve system made is so the water from the ATO pmup pump would literally shoot to the CEILING. So I removed the designated port and output connections from the ATK bracket and salvaged my old IM hydrofill bracket pictured here, I reamed a 1/2 inch tube to completely engulf the pmup output and connected it to the IM bracket. The bracket has numerous siphon breaks and also eliminates the messy splashing of the refilling. I was still not happy about losing the fail-safe on the ATK bracket so I used the now vacant hole to add an additional optical sensor as an emergency shutoff so now their is three sensors on the bracket (plus one in the ATO reservoir).
Protein Skimmer & UV bulb
As I single handily keep Innovative Marine in business I purchased their NuvoSkim DC protein skimmer which fits into the AIO rear chamber beautifully and is plug and play. At first the NOISE WAS INSANE, like hear it through the walls insane but it broke in and started skimming in a day or two. No complaints yet here. I also have the Innovative marine universal 10W UV bulb and pump going at very slow circulation speed.
Replaced IM Spinstreams
As much as I loved watching snails go for a ride I couldn't handle how often they would get stuck so I replaced it with two RFG nozzles and the necessary locline drop adapter for IM tanks. My new pump can EASILY handle running two of these badboys.
Replaced IM Media Baskets
The media baskets and their wonky tilts were bothering me so I switched for the much tighter fitting InTank media baskets.
June 2020: Photo updates!
Finally the tank is looking like something to be proud of again!
DOS Auto Water Change
The present project (like today) is plumbing a DOS for autowater changes. Since its an AIO and in a corner of a home office on a second floor it is quite the challenge to plumb efficiently. Currently my idea is to drop a line into the garage where I will have my mixing station and my drain will be plumbed directly out the window closest to the tank into a trough which will guide the water to an abused patch of cement/dirt in the backyard where there are some native halotolerant plants.
Thank you for reading all of this if you made it until the end! Please let me know if you have questions!
NOHtorious
New Member
I'm amazed that you were able to bring the tank back. Many years ago I had a FOWLR tank. I had the GHA break as bad as yours. I broke the tank down completely and started all over. Then, I had to move to a new apartment and along the way, all my fish died. I vowed I will never stock another fish tank but the apartment felt empty. So, I tried again but this time, I made a boneheaded move of placing the tank (it was a 90 gallon tank, I think) against the exposed brick wall without realizing that during the summer, since the other side of the wall is exposed to the sun, I basically put the tank next to the brick oven.... You can imagine what happened. I ran a chiller 24/7 but couldn't get the temperature down and again, all my fish died. I've been following everyone's build thread of IM Nuvo 30. I find that build threads like yours is really helpful. Thank you.
Similar threads
- Price: $300.00
- Shipping NOT Available
