Aaron's Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10g AIO

[AaronRV45]

So, a few months back I decided to build this nano reef using an Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10g. I started with the AIO tank, AI Prime HD16 light, skimmer, Nature's Ocean Bio-Activ Live Aragonite Reef Substrate, Real Reef Premium Live Rock for Saltwater Aquariums, Instant Ocean Reef Crystals Reef Salt, DrTim's Aquatics Reef One & Only Nitrifying Bacteria, and an Amazon RO under sink kit. 
 
My goal was to have a beautiful nano reef tank with fish and corals. I researched all the AIO nanos in the 10g range and I settled on the Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10g. I am glad that I did because it has been amazing. I have learned a lot in the past couple of months building this system and I am at a great place with this tank now. It is healthy and I want you to see what I have gone through so you don’t make the same mistakes and you can learn what is working for me and has made this a success.  
 
I wish I had documented all of this from the start and had pictures from the beginning, but I don’t, and I will try to describe everything in detail. Please PM me if you have questions or please, let me know if you see something I am doing wrong.  
 
So the first pictures I am going to show you are of it’s current status. Healthy, vibrant, great water parameters, full of life, the fish and shrimp are basically trained like a dog, and the corals are growing faster than I can keep up with.  
 
So, starting out I had a bit of trouble getting the cycle done. After a couple of weeks things were good and I added Barry who is my Clownfish. He is doing great and is like a little puppy.  
 
I was using the Innovative Marine skimmer for this tank off and on for a month or two. It flat out sucks. The only adjustment is moving the collection container up and down which adjust the water level. It works on a thin line of, ‘it blows micro bubbles everywhere’, ‘it fills up in an hour’, or ‘it works (3% of the time)’. Waste of money. 
 
SO, I bought the Innovative Marine UV sterilizer. I installed it and went to bed. The next day I about pooped myself when I saw my tank. Not ONE spec of algae, white sand, crystal clear water, and a happy tank. I definitely recommend this. 

So, at this point I know I have three fish. A clown, a firefish, and a diamond watchman goby. All are happy. I decided to add on to my cleaning crew because my sand is looking a bit neglected, and I want some nassarius snails. I bought an online order from saltwateraquarium.com. The 10 Gallon Standard NANO Reef Cleanup Crew for $49.99 + shipping. Great. I got these two nice big nassarius snails. Three days later my firefish disappeared. The next day I see half its body on the sand bed. Ok, it died, and the cleaners started eating it. Then my diamond watchman suffers the same fate. I deal with it and add a new firefish and the same dang thing happens. I then put my light on with a moonlight and a camera on the aquarium and I filmed the supposed nassarius snail hunting at night. I catch him kill the newest firefish while it is sleeping in the rocks. I then lure the snail out the next night with a piece of fresh mackerel and catch it. I take detailed pics and post on different forums and email different places to find out what it is because nassarius snails don’t do this. It comes back that it is NOT a nassarius snail and is in fact a whelk. I contact salwateraquarium.com and they say that it is a nassarius snail and deny anything. I lost the video I took or I would have sent that to them as well. I will never do business with them ever again. Stay far far away. 
 
Looking back I now know that the whelk hunted and killed most of the entire cleanup crew they sent me. There is a pile of shells in the corner that my twin spot goby seems to like to move around to prove it. Yes, I have a twin spot and he is awesome. More on him later and how I get him to eat anything.  
 
So, the whelk is gone and I am telling you the truth, my fish came out in celebration. They almost immediately became social. I thought I was having issues with the type of fish I was buying because they were hiding a lot. It wasn’t that at all. It’s because that predatory snail was in there and they knew it was after them. Everything is awesome now and I am so much more careful about where I buy things and what I put in there.  
 
I keep adding on corals and they grow like crazy. I adjust my lighting a little here and there to get the AI light just right. It’s now perfect, for today anyway. OH, and I turned off the moonlight after the whelk fiasco. I now have four happy and healthy fish. The clownfish, a purple firefish, a Bengai Cardinal, and a twin spot goby. I also have two shrimp. A peppermint shrimp to keep aiptasia out of my tank and a skunk cleaner shrimp. 

 

Fish first. I feed them once daily. I alternate foods. Frozen mysis shrimp, a frozen cubed variety mix with 100 different things in it, and then pellets and flakes. I do the pellets and flakes so that if I am out of town for a few days I can turn on my auto feeder. I have trained all my fish to eat all these things, so they don’t starve.  

So, you know now that I have twin spot goby which are notoriously hard to keep because they only eat copepods. Well, I trained mine to eat mysis shrimp from the get-go. When I brought him home, he dug out his home under a rock and stayed in there for a while acclimating. I basically took a cuvette and put 1/8th of a block of mysis in it and a few mls of salt water to defrost it. Then I sucked that concentrated mixture into a pipette. Then I stealthily put my hand in the water with the pipette and maneuver it just outside of his cave being careful not to cast a shadow into the cave. Then I squeezed the mysis into the cave and pulled my hand out. He wouldn’t come out. After three days he started coming out to say “Hi”. I would then pipette food straight to him so he didn’t have to compete with the other fish, and he would gobble it up. Then I started sprinkling pellets in front of his cave. He would come out and eat them. Then I would mix up flakes in the cuvette and suck it into the pipette and feed it to him and he would eat it. Now I just feed the tank with the pump on for a couple of seconds to stir everything up and then put it on feed mode and he eats with the group normally no matter what I put in there. NOW he actually swims in the water column and will follow my finger through the aquarium. That’s why I say these fish act like trained dogs. When I feed them at 5 PM I gently tap my index finger on the glass and everything in the aquarium comes BOLTING out ready to be fed!  
 
Now for the shrimp. These two guys are awesome. They love attention. When I put my hand in there to do anything they are all over my hand cleaning me and wanting to play. It’s so much fun. Amazingly smart little creatures. They just seem to want to please you just like a dog does. I have had trouble with them being like that during water changes. I used to have to be very careful not to suck them up when I was pumping water out. I used to use a water pump that I had to submerge in the tank and I had to goalie the water pump intake to keep them from getting sucked up because they want to be on my hand. I use a big water pump now to do 35% water changes weekly and it sucks that 3.5 gallons of water out in less than a minute but now the pump is external and has an in and an out line so the in line can be covered by my hand to prevent them from being sucked in. 
 
Dosing. I dose daily. I dose 2.5 mls of Red Sea Reef Energy Plus Coral Nurtition and 2.5 mls of Algae Barn Oceanmagik. I used to use ReefSnow instead of the Oceanmagik but the Oceanmagik is alive and I get better results.  

 

Testing. I currently use Hannah Testers. They are a pain but better than liquids. I am going to buy a Hydros Mavern when they are available. All my test results are great all the time.  
 
Refugium. Yep, you heard me right. In that back area of the Innovative Marine tank there are three chambers. I have a UV sterilizer in the left most chamber which is where the water drops in. Then the middle chamber is my micro refugium. I have two Marinepure cubes in the bottom of the factory Innovative filter drop in and on top of that I have a bunch of Sea Lettuce from Algae Barn. I seeded all of that with a jar of Poseidon’s Feast copepods from Algae Barn. The lettuce and cubes are after the UV sterilizer so as not to sterilize everything completely. The light from my AI is enough to keep the lettuc happy. NOTE, this refugium was not in place for 5 weeks after I taught the twin spot to eat other foods. I am posting pics of the micro refugium as well.  
 
That was long but I hope it has been insightful. Once again, please feel free to ask me anything.  
 
AND here are the pics: 
 

 
 
 

[AaronRV45]

One more thing. I had issues with firefish jumping up through the screen. I bought mesh screen on Amazon and taped another section onto the bottom of the lid so that it was alternating basically making it finer.

And yes, there is a Maxima clam in there that is growing fast and doing great. 

[AaronRV45]

Here are my light settings. YES, they are very high but I have NO nuisance algae and everything loves it!

 

[DBladen]

Great looking tank. 
 

It’s inspired me to get my IM Nano 10 out of the garage and give it another go. I didn’t realise they made a UV for it, I got fed up of battling algae in it last time and just put all the livestock back in my big reef.