IM 20 Nuvo Fusion (livestock)

[Litt]

I have been a lurker on this forum and other similar forums for a couple of years now.  I have always wanted to get into the hobby but just haven't for this or that reason.  I decided that this is the year I jump in and wanted to document it here.  This will be my first SW tank so I am looking forward to the learning experience and process.  I plan to have this a mixed reef tank.  With all the Black Friday sales going on, I pulled the trigger for my Christmas gift:

 

IM Nuvo Fusion 20

Pukani Dry Live Rock (20 pounds)

CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade Live Sand (20 pounds)

Vortech MP10WQD

75W Neo-Therm Heater

BRS 5-Stage 75GPD RO/DI

EHEIM Compacton 1000 (264 GPH)

Auqa Gadget Hydrofill ATO/Reservoir

50W Eheim Jager (for mixing)

Sicce Voyager Nano Stream (for mixing)

Red Sea Coral Pro Salt

Other various support stuff (refractometer, test kits, etc.)

 

I plan to replace the stock return with the Eheim and then use the stock pump as the ATO  pump.  Still TBD is the light.  Right now I am oscillating between two AI Prim HDs, the Radion XR15W Pro, and the Nanobox Duo Plus M.  Roughly they are all about the same price point.

 

Shipment should be here early next week and then will start to cure the rock.  More to come. 

 

 

[HIppieRose]

I wish you luck.  I am still new at this and well be for many years to come. 

[Litt]

Boxes arrived today.  No time to do much with them right now other than stack.  Will do more later today or tomorrow.  Hopefully get the rocks out and get a cure going.

[Litt]

I finally had some time today to get into all the boxes.  First thing, check that all pieces arrived.  I received the ship notification from BRS that the IM20 and my 5 gallon ATO shipped in the same box.  I was a bit surprised at this but thought maybe one was inside the other.  Turns out, the aquarium is there, and the ATO is not.  I shot an email off to BRS but not reply yet.  Probably slammed with the holidays.  Hopefully they will correct the issue.  I guess its a good chance to see how their customer service is.  At least it wasn't one of the more expensive items that was not packed.

 

 

 

 

[Litt]

Next task was to check the rocks out.  I ordered 20 pounds of pukani dry.  This seems like a gamble to just get a random set of rocks especially considering how much the rock work influences how great the tank looks.  I have read in other topics that they put some effort into selecting rocks before shipping.  I think this is accurate.  The rock selections and sizes were spot on for the tank size.  The are wide enough to cover length and width with about 2 inches to spare in each dimension and high enough to cover 3/4th of the way up if I stack some of them.  Honestly, I couldn't have picked a better set of rocks if I was at the LFS.  In total they shipped me about 22 pounds:

 

 

[Litt]

I did a fair amount of research on rock types, advantages, and disadvantages.  I went with pukani mainly because of the large surface area it provides for better filtration.  With this though, I have also read that pukani has a tendency to leach a lot of phosphate.  I can now understand why.  There is a tremendous amount of dead and decaying things on these rocks and many holes with various things up inside of them.  I spent about an hour picking things out and scrubbing the rocks.

[Litt]

Next step is to get the rock curing.  So many opinions on different ways to do this.  I originally had planned to just do a traditional cure with warm salt water for about a month.  I recently have been reading more about bleaching the rocks first.  After seeing the amount of stuff on the pukani, I decided to start out with a bleach bath.  I had an old freshwater tank that would work great for this so I grabbed it and cleaned it out and put the rock in.  This is a 10 gallon tank and was plenty big enough to fit all the rock in.  I mixed 10:1 water to bleach and put in a small power head to keep the water circulating and hopefully break loose more of the decaying material.  I plan to let this soak for about 24 hours before I do anything else with it.  After only a few minutes I can already see a ton of debris still coming off the rocks.  This most likely means I am a poor scrubber but I think this bath will be worth it in the long run.

 

 

[Litt]

Bleach bath is now done.  My whole basement smells like a swimming pool.  The water turned out to be extremely dirty (see picture below).  I took the rocks out and washed them down good with high pressure water.  The rocks visually look much cleaner.  Most of the decaying matter is gone from them (at least the matter that I could see with my eyes)  There is a very strong smell of bleach on them so next step is to get all the bleach out of them.  I plan to do several soaks now with regular tap water and Prime.  I will change the water every day for the next 3-5 days and see how the smell goes.  After that I plan to let them totally dry out again.  That should totally break down any chlorine or chloramine that has been left from the bleach bath.  I was surprised how powerful the prime is...1ml per 10 gallons of water.  Because of the bleach, I doubled this.

[Dreichler]

For an IM 20, I would go with the 2 Primes.  I have 3 over my JBJ 45 and love it.  There’s no shadowing at all and I have a lot of caves and overhangs.  You would also be able to crank the Primes up to a higher intensity because they are a little less powerful than the Radion.  Another point is that the Radion only has one puck, with one Radion, you’ll most likely have some shadowing and maybe not good PAR levels in the corners of the tank.  

[Type-H20]

On 11/18/2017 at 9:55 AM, Litt said:

I have been a lurker on this forum and other similar forums for a couple of years now.  I have always wanted to get into the hobby but just haven't for this or that reason.  I decided that this is the year I jump in and wanted to document it here.  This will be my first SW tank so I am looking forward to the learning experience and process.  I plan to have this a mixed reef tank.  With all the Black Friday sales going on, I pulled the trigger for my Christmas gift:

 

IM Nuvo Fusion 20

Pukani Dry Live Rock (20 pounds)

CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade Live Sand (20 pounds)

Vortech MP10WQD

75W Neo-Therm Heater

BRS 5-Stage 75GPD RO/DI

EHEIM Compacton 1000 (264 GPH)

Auqa Gadget Hydrofill ATO/Reservoir

50W Eheim Jager (for mixing)

Sicce Voyager Nano Stream (for mixing)

Red Sea Coral Pro Salt

Other various support stuff (refractometer, test kits, etc.)

 

I plan to replace the stock return with the Eheim and then use the stock pump as the ATO  pump.  Still TBD is the light.  Right now I am oscillating between two AI Prim HDs, the Radion XR15W Pro, and the Nanobox Duo Plus M.  Roughly they are all about the same price point.

 

Shipment should be here early next week and then will start to cure the rock.  More to come. 

 

 

Nice Christmas gift - good luck with the build.  I would go with the Duo Plus in this case, because first of all its a great light, and second, two separate lights mean two mounts (gooseneck or the other Ai mounts)  and IMO one mount will look cleaner over a 24" tank. 

[Litt]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I’m set on figuring out lights today.  It may come down to what’s on sale hehe.

[Litt]

Ok, time to decide on lights.  Black Friday didn't do much for prices...in fact it did nothing.  So I had to go about this a more logical way.  Here is my view of the choices:

 

 

Looking at this chart, it seems to me the Nanobox duo is the best choice.  Price is the best, best warranty, and fits the rectangular tank quite well.  It gives better spread in this case because of the two LED modules (similar to what the AI would bring me) but with a single package.  My assumption is that when it comes down to the actually light (par), that all the choices are relatively equal and would perform excellent for a tank this size.

[Litt]

A couple of updates.  BRS contacted me and apologized for the missing ATO tank.  They have sent it to me via second day air no questions asked.  Good customer service which is appreciated.

 

I have had my rocks soaking in tap water + Prime over the last few days.  I have done about 3 water changes in the course of that time just to flush the systems.  At this point, the rocks really smell like nothing.  I was curious how fast the Prime would take to clean up the water so I used a couple of the chlorine testing strips to try it out.  I first filled a bucket with tap water and took a reading.  Total chlorine was coming in about 1.5ppm.  I then put a few drops of Prime in and mixed around.  I then tested it about 30 seconds later and total chlorine was 0ppm.  I also tested the water after letting the rocks soak for about 18 hours and total chlorine was always 0ppm.

 

In the meanwhile, I had a chance to get the RO/DI system installed.  When I first opened this box it looked really complicated and the instructions seemed lacking.  After staring at it a few minutes I realize this is the most simple system you can imagine.  Red into water line, black is waste water, blue is good water.  I have a sump and water line in my basement that seemed like the perfect place to install:

 

 

 

The RO/DI system comes with all sorts of ways of hooking into your water lines.  I had a valve already available so I went and bought a splitter and hooked one side to a small hose and the other to the RO/DI input.  I hung the filters into the concrete walls.  I need to clean all these lines up but for now it works.  Once hooked up, I flushed the system for about an hour to clean it out.

 

 

Lastly I checked the final output of the RO/DI using the built in TDS meter.  Final output reads 0, just what we want:

 

 

I have removed the rocks from the water and am letting them dry now.  In the meanwhile I am filling my holding tank with RO/DI water.  The Red Sea Pro salt suggest to mix with a water temperature of 68 degrees and then raise the temp to 78 so I am working on getting the water ready to mix my first batch of salt water.  Once the rocks dry out (hopefully within a few days) I am going to put the rocks in warm salt water and let them cure for about a month.  I have to travel for work this upcoming week so hoping to get them soaking in the saltwater before I leave.

[Litt]

One week of soaking in heated saltwater.  I thought the water would be dirtier and smell more but honestly the water is still very clear and has almost no smell.  I am not sure if this is because the bleach and scrub did a good job at removing a lot of the decaying matter or if the cycle just hasn't taken full force yet.  I will probably start testing the water for ammonia to see what is going on.  I don't have a phosphate checker at the moment otherwise I would check that also.  Since part of the purpose of this rock curing is to get good bacteria into the rocks prior to putting into the DT, I decided to jump start it a little and add some bacteria today.  I have about 10 gallons of water in here so I added 20ml of bacteria starting fluid.

[Litt]

Week two of soaking complete.  Water and tank look exactly the same.  I have the tank covered so very little evaporation also.  There appears to be very little decaying material at this point.  The water is mostly clear (maybe slight yellow tint) and free of foul odor and no ammonia is present and no chlorine present.  After the bleach bath and scrub and power wash, I think I actually could have skipped the soaking part and cycled the rocks with the rest of the tank when I set that up but no big deal, I am sure the soaking doesn't hurt.  Two more weeks of this and will start the DT setup and cycle.  My nano box duo came in but haven't had time to play with it.

[Litt]

It has been a bit over a month now since the rocks have been soaking.  Being Christmas day, it was time to open all the boxes and do initial setup.  The tank came out first.  My intention for this tank was to put it on my desk in my home office.  I figured I would get the most viewing pleasure out of the tank in this location since I am at my computer a lot of the evening.  It also makes the tank front and center so I thought I would be more inclined to always keep a close eye on it.

 

 

Sorry for the glare....lots of snow and lots of clean glass and clean black desk.  Initial impression of the Nuvo 20 is it looks very sleek.  The black silicon compliments the office nicely.  The build quality seems good.  My only complaint is the tape the IM uses.  It leaves residue everywhere when you peel it off:

 

 

I had to use glue remover to get it all off.  Not a big deal but I think they could up it a notch and use tape that won't leave behind a mess.

[Litt]

Second order of business was to upgrade the return pump.  I have read quite a few complaints about how loud the stock pump is and wasn't super high flow so I traded it out for an eheim:

 

 

The pump fit very will in the back chamber with one exception, the tubing is about 1cm too short and so the pump doesn't rest on the bottom of the chamber.  It is basically just hanging there by the tubes.  If I get animated enough, I will change the tubing out at some point but not worth the effort right now and I don't have any extra tubing to extend it.  I am a bit afraid that it will rattle around a bit since it isn't anchored.  If this happens, that will be motivation enough to change it out.

 

I bought the fish guards for this tank.  I don't think they are necessary but I have them so I put them on:

 

[Litt]

For the heater, I purchased the Cobalt 75W:

 

 

It has a very low profile and is very compact.  Also very good build quality.  If i were to buy this over, however, I would go for the 100W one.  It is a bit bigger but the back chamber has plenty of room to put it in and 75W is rated for maximum size of 20G.  

 

[Litt]

On to aquascaping.....this was a tough one for me.  The tank was actually a bit smaller than I was envisioning and the rocks seemed to fill it very quickly.  In fact, I ended up tossing one of them out.  My main purpose for the pukani was filtration so I wanted to get as much in as possible so the volume of rock is a little more than I would have liked but I was motivated to break the rock up.  The layout does allow for a fair amount of differing heights for corals and various places to hide so this is good:

 

 

I didn't want to leave the rock out for too long from the soaking water so I quickly added the sand in and started to fill it with water.  I used the special-blend caribsea live sand:

 

 

I ended up using about 75% of the sand in the bag.  This equates to about 15 pounds of sand.  The sand bad ranges from 1 inch to 1.25 inches throughout the bottom of the tank.  The sand is a bit whiter than I was expecting, which I am happy about.  After adding the sand and some initial water, there was a tremendous amount of debris floating around:

 

A lot of people maybe miss the fact that the sand comes with some water clarifier.  Before I added this I had to make up some more water however to fill out the tank.

[Litt]

Lighting and movement.  As I mentioned earlier, I went with the nanobox duo m plus.  The light feels very high quality and is well packaged.  The mount works fine and is very stiff.  I was a bit worried that it would sink or sag but its very stiff.  It won't be an issue.  I set up the light with the bluefish app without any issue...worked on first try and light magically came on and was already programmed for the default cycle.  This is good enough for now.....lots to play with here but will save that for later:

 

 

The MP10 is awesome.  Also a very well-built high quality product and was packaged very nicely.  Not much to set up here, just plug in:

 

 

[Litt]

Lots and lots of wires to run.  It is a mess right now and needs some attention to clean up.  This will be my task for tomorrow:

 

 

I haven't had the change to set up the ATO yet either.  This will be hidden inside the desk after cutting out a few of the drawers.  Besides, it is too much fun to play with the lights and the MP10.  The MP10 has great control and is super responsive.  I am very impressed with this power head.  At full blast it is moving sand all around the tank.....even at 50% it is moving sand around.  I settled it on about 25% and can see every spot in the tank moving water through it.  I haven't figured out which is the best mode for it to be one but I am definitely going to want to keep it under 25%.

 

[Litt]

I am going to have to learn how to take photos with the LEDs on also....lots of purple and the iPhone can't seem to figure it out:

 

 

Enough for one day.  Tomorrow going to figure out cable placement and start the tank cycling.

[gsechen]

what gooseneck is that? how high do you have your light from water? i got a nuvo 20 too with a nanobox duo and wondering if your gooseneck is shorter

[Litt]

7 hours ago, gsechen said:

what gooseneck is that? how high do you have your light from water? i got a nuvo 20 too with a nanobox duo and wondering if your gooseneck is shorter

It is the 9 inch gooseneck.  It is just about 6 inches above the water.  Looking at it front to back, it isn't quite long enough to be centered over the display area of the tank at this height.  I am thinking maybe the 15 is a better option but this will work fine.  It does allow me some high intensity light near the top.

[Jaredgib]

Following  along, I'm about to upgrade my Fusion 20 to a 30L and am using most of the same equipment as Litt. I'll post my build thread soon.