Penny's Reef - new IM Fusion 30L

[Penny's Reef]

Thought I would share some pics of our new Nuvo 30L. I set this up with/for my kids two weeks ago. We built a house a year ago with a 260 FOWLR built into the wall. My kids (10 and 12) have really gotten into it and wanted their own tank. After 6 months of still bugging me about it, and offering to pay for it themselves with all the birthday and chore money they've saved, we caved and agreed to let them have a tank. We chose the IM Nuvo 30L because of all the good things we've heard/read about it on this forum and elsewhere, and it wasn't too expensive (relatively that is - everything is expensive in this hobby!).

 

Anyway, there's not a lot to take pictures of for a build thread with an all-in-one tank, so I'm just posting pics of the tank itself. We set it up two weeks ago, added the live rock, blood red shrimp and a small cleanup crew. Last weekend we added our first corals and a small ORA ocellaris clown. Sadly, the clown developed Brooklynella within a few days and died. Not an auspicious start, but the coral is doing well, and we added a few more pieces this weekend.

 

To get started, I seeded the tank with some live rock from an existing system in addition to the Real Reef rock I used, plus a dose of fritzyme and skipped the cycle entirely. Seems to have worked as I've never had detectable ammonia but had about 10 ppm nitrate this weekend. We just did our first water change and I'm going to start dosing with two part and essential elements tomorrow morning to try to get the coralline going and corals growing. I also got some Marine Snow and I'll experiment with that stuff to feed the corals - anyone else tried this stuff?

 

Anyway, here's a pic of the full tank:

 

 

For the aquascaping I tried to replicate a spur and groove formation, or the deeply cut coral pillars like you see in Grand Cayman, taking advantage of the width of the tank to build three columns. This gives us some extra sides for coral placement in the channels. We'll see how well that works out.

 

For lighting we are using a single Current USA Orbit Marine LED fixture. It's nice and low profile and seems to be pretty bright. No idea what the actual PAR ratings are but others on here seem to be having good success with them. I built the rock up high to make sure I can get some more demanding corals close to the light. I'm debating whether it makes sense to add second one, though, to provide better coverage front to back. Anyone on here ever tried two of these fixtures on this tank before?

 

As for fish, we are leaving the tank fallow for 6 weeks to make sure the Brooklynella is eradicated before adding any more. When ready, we'll add another clown, some red filefish, maybe a flasher wrasse or jawfish, and a copperband butterfly. My daughter has been wanting a copperband for a year and plans to name it Penny (hence Penny's Reef). I know they can be death to zoas but we only have a few zoas and if the CBB we get has a taste for them, it's no biggie. I just hope she doesn't have a taste for other corals!

 

Here are a few close-up pics of some of the other corals we've added so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any thoughts, feedback or suggestions are welcomed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LongDoggy]

Very nice start! These 30l have been hard to resist. You've got some lucky kids! My daughter likes to stare at my tank, but she is way too young to have her own yet.

[paradizecityz]

Looking great!

[Penny's Reef]

My green sarcphyton frag (first coral pic above) stopped opening yesterday, after doing great for the first couple weeks. I tested my water and my alk is high (11.2) while Ca is low (320). pH is steady at 8.2. Could the high alk be bothering it? All other corals look fine. Any suggestions?