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IM fusion 20 gallon aio tank


Teenage reefer

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Teenage reefer

the start of my first reef tank 

this is my first saltwater tank and the setup we used 

im starting my tank up using my brothers old tank a innovative marine fusion nano 20 gallon tank 

he had his tank up roughly 3 years ago and im getting into the hobby and he is getting back into the hobby 

the gear list for the tank is old and dusty needed the be cleaned it hasn't been touched in 3 years so it needed a cleaning due to salt build op on the flow heads, sides, back wall of tank, pumps, and heaters it was very much need. 

the gear we are using for the tank is listed below 

-innovative marine fusion nano 20 gallon aio tank

-kessil a160we tuna blue light with the goose neck attachment w/ kessil controller

-cobalt neo therm 75w tank heater 

-replaced the original pump with a cobalt mj-1200 295gph (nothing wrong with the original pump just wanted a little more power then offered original is used for mixing salt water for water changes)

-innovative marine aqua gadget spin stream nozzle  x2 

-tunze osmolater auto top off 

-innovative marine custom filter caddy's on each end of tank instead of filter socks 

-brs 4 stage ro-di system

that is it gear wise for the tank the type of sand, rock is listed below

so for the sand we chose

-caribsea fiji pink arag-alive reef sand

-dead live rock from my brothers previous tank

-bio spira instant ocean to start the cycle

i already have the rock in the tank layed out with a towel under it trying aquascapes for the tank pictures will be listed below 

we are currently waiting for replacement filters and canisters to be delivered and sand so that we can actually get the tank up and running pictures will be posted of the aqua scape below we are open to ideas thoughts and opinion's for our build please be open minded and leave what you think we should do 

 

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Teenage reefer
10 hours ago, Manylps said:

Looking good. I have the same tank. If you're thinking about a Skimmer try the AquaMaxx NF-1 nano-skimmer in the center section.

Not really looking to put one in the tank just yet no bio load in tank so we where going to get one to put in but the recommendation is greatly appreciated how well does yours fit and work with your tank 

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Teenage reefer

Got bored while waiting and played around with the aquascape and think I found the final one gives me more surface area to place corals while still keeping that  1 1/2 gap between rock and glass and enough room for scrapers and the magnetic glass cleaner and anything I miss I’m sure cuc could handle 

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The replacement rodi filters and canisters the glue sand and biospira all come in today going to get a brute trash can to start making the water withing the next day or so 

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Teenage reefer

Currently working to glue and secure the final aquascape together the rodi Water is in the midst of making rn just time and patience left and only a few hours till time to add water and sand 

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So it’s been a few days now and we had some problems with the salt the water got made up and was clean and had no problems and then we started to add salt to the water and the water just got very dirty and murky with a brownish color to it so we dropped the heater in and the pump in and let it do it’s think for ab 2 days and seen no change no salt would mix nor the water cleared up so I made a trip to our lfs and picked up some instance ocean reef crystals I got a 14 lbs bag for 10 bucks and it’s supposed to make 50 gallons this is only temporary to get water in the tank I ordered a larger 5 gallon bucket from brs of the same salt I think my problem laid at the fact I was using 4 year old salt from my brothers old tank the new water is currently making and we have new water making it has been running for about 3 hours now and roughly around 9 gallons of water made we have the inside of the trash can marked at different levels 5, 10, 15, 20, gallons all marked inside the trash can so I have a idea of how much water is inside it it will take around 6 hours to make the water so I will update then the Aquascape is glued and dried together and is all holding I had to brace the shelf piece to get it glued but is now stable and held in strong I can pick the whole scape up by that one piece and I tested that with every piece to make sure it was stable 

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Big step for the tank after the salt problems I had in the first week or so I went and got more salt and mixed it ended up with a little to high of a salinity so I had to fine tune it last night and got a perfect salinity right today just by adding a little more ro-di water and got water and sand in tank and started the cycle today  the way we added water to the tank really kept it from stirring the water up a lot and I can see the back of the tank and the dscape I basically just added my water to the back tank and let it trickle through instead of adding to main tank it worked out very well and have about a inch and a half sand bed 

 

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So I’m about a week into the cycle and my levels are reading kinda high for the most part but my test kit may be bad so I’m not to sure yet I’m going to attempt to run some water by my lfs to have them test it for me my levels are all good except for nitrate and nitrite nitrate reading around 20-50 mine is a color based test and I’m not sure if my test are bad though it definitely spiked it read in the 10-20 range  now spiked to 20 to 50 and nitrite reading way over one 

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  • 5 weeks later...
Teenage reefer

So just a little bit of a update I know I disappeared for a little while but my cycle took forever so about 4 or 5 days ago my cycle finally completed and I went to my lfs yesterday and picked up my first fish and a few corals I got 2 black ocellaris  clown fish 3 corals a Kenya tree, dragon soul favia, and a green hairy mushroom I’ll hopefully be returning to the later today or tomorrow pickup a few more corals as my lfs restocked today and I kinda picked up a lot of stuff on sale that still looks nice aside from this the tank finally has a bio load and stocked to a portion 

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Went back by my lfs today and picked up part of my cuc and another coral frag got a nice frat of zoas for ab 50 bucks and has around 30 to 40 polyps they are all closed up right now but only bad news is that when i got them at the lfs they where all open and pretty and nice looking but when i got home and got a look at them there was a massive underlying problem with them and that the open polyps hid some bubble algae under them so after very carefully picking at them for around a hour after making sure they stayed wet hydrated and okay I finally picked them off all visible algae along with picking off algae they brought home a new pest a zoa worm but got rid of him found him after the coral dip but now all I can do is wait and hopefully no outbreaks happen the coral opens up nicely and grows well 

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Teenage reefer
On 4/11/2021 at 6:49 AM, debbeach13 said:

I hope you got most if not all the pest out. That is a large frag it should adjust is a few days Good luck with it

As of now everything is good the snails are going there job no algae outbreak yet and no pest seen yet he opened up nicely it has around 35-40 heads on it some staggered under one another but still able to have light reach it I’ve got to get my Kenya off the frag plug and get it glueded down my trocha keeps knocking him over and everytime I set him back up he comes and pays him another visit but I’m not worried ab getting my Kenya off the plug all of the frags at my lfs made them that all the corals when fragged are glued to a rock then the rock glued to the frag so that way when purchased and brought home you won’t have a bunch of ugly frag plugs ruining your tank which I think is really cool I moved my mushroom around the tank to a little lower lighting and a little lower bit of flow and it’s doing great it opened up a lot more and has a lot of movement for how small it is my next purchase will most likely be my anemone I don’t want to fully stock the tank and have the anemone kill something trying to find a happy spot to rest so before I take anything off the plug I’m letting my anemone get set before I make my final placements on any corals 

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So it’s been a few days I’ve done my first water change and got my levels all good I’m starting to grow a bit of algae though all just hair algae and luckily no bubble algae from the infested zoa frag I received only thing I have in the tank cuc wise is 2 nassiraus to keep my sand bed clean a Trocha but I need a few recommendations to help keep my tank clean glass cleaners and rock cleaners I would like to stay away from hermit crabs if possible and stick to mainly more snails and shrimp and any algae eating fish the hell would be great 

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Made a run to my lfs today and picked up another trocha the one I have now is doing a great job cleaning up all the diatoms but could use a little bit of help not only that I decided to pick up a acan frag with 4 head for 10 which in my opinion is a steal 

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So as of right now I’ve got a good handful of corals in my tank now and I and excited to say I’m ab to make my first big purchase of corals And add a few new additions to the tank by adding a goby and pistol shrimp pair aside from that I stopped by my lfs and picked up a small blasto frag for at closed up right now because I removed it from the frag plug and got him aggravated same for the rest of my corals they where able to remove off of the plugs but the tank is not in full stride 

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So I had a little bit of a unnoticeable mishap when I took my Kenya off it’s frag plug when I took of off the plug the rock it was on split and caused a decent bit of damage to my Kenya with it normally standing ab 2-3 inches tall it has shrunk and where the gash is has seemed to heal everything is opening up fine and looks normal just really short and stubby as soon as my next paycheck comes in I’m making a big order for a power head and a little bit to do with cord management rn I just have a mess but t all have a drip loop I would just like to clean it up a little and have everything looking nice and clean here’s the Kenya tree after it’s little incident any help on a way to possibly help it grow back faster would be great image.thumb.jpg.f1c666981d8cd9e694a2a7476552a13a.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.cf7fcb1aee6cc6163fa0a81c92ec6669.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.2278eabe71b7fc7d6cb4b8bf1e94bce4.jpgand my sand bed is dirty rn but I plan on making a run to my lfs and hopefully picking up a few more cuc to help keep sand bed clean image.thumb.jpg.9140fb668d4b830f4c97891d97069ec2.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.dc08a19f2afd6ad7aa786191f73085be.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.9ba01d20dd366a2d568c36f36c99a825.jpg

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Teenage reefer

So I made a run to my lfs and picked up a new addition to the tank 2 emerald crabs and a lawnmower blenny and a zoa frag 

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A few cool shots of the tank from today got my lens for the tank blenny is being more social now I guess you could say still playing hide and seek with him he finds a new hiding spot every day and a new crevice to curl up in but I think he’s happy with only 2 of them one being under my zoa frag 

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I made another order for the tank and it’s supposed to come in Thursday or Friday for a power head and some stuff for cable management for the tank but other then that everything is going pretty smooth and pretty easy going 

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Powerhead and cable management come in last night but it was to late to install so I figured I’d wake up earlier then my light schedule which runs 10:30 to 10:30 and instal it and run it when the schedule comes on but I got it in and got all of my cable management done 

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