Build Log - Brisc0's IM 40G Fusion

[Brisc0]

Hey everyone. I got my hands on an Innovative Marine 40G Fusion system last week and am in the process of putting everything together. I am always happy for feedback and thank you all for stopping by to check out what I am up to. My full aquaria blog is over at http://reef.bushwilliams.com if you want to see more on this tank or older systems.

Now, the 40G:


UPS got it to me last Wednesday but I was hard at work a few days before that picking my spot. I wanted to put it on our built-in cabinets in the living room but it would have buckled under the weight so I had to re-enforce with some headers to carry the load to the floor. I built with 2x4 but then capped the headers off with pegboard to make mounting and organizing easier:



So back to Wednesday, the tank showed up and after a 24 hour leak test I filled it up:


Now I have aquascaped and loaded in 20lbs of Tropic Eden Reef Flakes mixed with 20lbs of Tropic Eden mini reef flakes.


More to come, thanks for reading.

[whiteshark]

I dig the tank placement. Looks good so far.

[Brisc0]

Last weekend was awesome, Marine Depot sent me most of the gear I am building the system out with and here is the breakdown:

• EcoTech Marine VorTech MP10wES Propeller Pump w/ Wireless EcoSMART Driver
• EcoTech Marine Radion XR30w Gen3 LED Light Fixture
• EcoTech Marine Hanging Kit XR655 for Radion LED Fixture
• Neptune Systems Controller
• Apex Jr. with
• Ecotech WXM Wireless Module
• Energy Bar 8
• Tunze Osmolator Universal 3155
• Innovative Marine AUQA Gadget Ghost Protein Skimmer - MidSize
• 2x Innovative Marine AUQA Gadget Spin Stream - Return Nozzle
• Eheim Jager TruTemp 150 Watt Fully Submersible UL Approved Heater
• 2x Innovative Marine Minimax All-In-One Desktop Media Reactor
• 2x Quarts of Carbon
• Phosban GFO

Of the items above I will be returning the Spinstream Nozzles as they are WAY too loud when in operation. I can tolerate some noise but the sound they produce is reminiscent of grinding gears in a manual transmission automobile. Also the heater doesn't fit in my 40 Gallon System so I am going to have to use it in one of my reservoir trashcans and get a shorter one. I listed the Skimmer above but it was actually back ordered and should be here by the time I get home from work today!

[Brisc0]

Never sure if Flow or Lights are my favorite reef toys but I have had Vortech stream pumps before, this was my first LED so I cracked that bad boy open immediately!

I swear it took me like 4 hours to figure out the best way to hang the Radion XR30w. I started with the incredible over complex idea to use some 18" curtain rod that I ran through some stainless eye-bolts but it looked really janky, see for yourself:


So, after a couple more attempts which I will spare you I finally settled on just looping the hanging kits wire through the bolts. This gives me the 9" over the water I need to validate the warranty and enough head room for adequate cooling. I may do something about hat power cord at some point and will likely swap the bolts out for smaller ones later as well.


I mounted the power supply / ballast under the cabinet.



All in all pretty pleased with it for now.



Covered a lot more ground this weekend, more to come in a bit. Thanks for checking in on the build!

[brad65ford]

Nice! looking good!

[Reduck]

Looks great so far. Are you planning on ditching one of the baskets to run the second reactor? Not a lot of sump room otherwise. I have my heater, probes and ato into the main sump and the ghost and reactor in their respective sumps. I replaced one of the factory baskets with their custom baskets and will probably ditch the other one for just a floss holder shortly, or an intank basket when they are released...

[Brisc0]

Originally Posted by Reduck

Looks great so far. Are you planning on ditching one of the baskets to run the second reactor? Not a lot of sump room otherwise. I have my heater, probes and ato into the main sump and the ghost and reactor in their respective sumps. I replaced one of the factory baskets with their custom baskets and will probably ditch the other one for just a floss holder shortly, or an intank basket when they are released...

My plan is to pull both baskets and run two reactors and the skimmer. Any chance you could post or tweet me a pic of your ghost? Curious how deep / how many turns of the air valve you did and how you like the skimmer in general?

[adddo]

Looking great, love the placement!

[Reduck]

Originally Posted by Brisc0

My plan is to pull both baskets and run two reactors and the skimmer. Any chance you could post or tweet me a pic of your ghost? Curious how deep / how many turns of the air valve you did and how you like the skimmer in general?

yea, with all that rock you should have adequate natural filtration.
I've been running the Ghost for a while. It started out a bit noisy, but settled down. I have the air valve wfo, just maybe one thread left and I'm keeping the cup a bit low and wet still. It does what its supposed to. I'm not putting a heavy load on it, yet it still collects skimmate. Only feeding once a week.
Here is a pic of it from this morning..pardon my wiring mess. Just installed the new leds last week and have not decided the wiring path yet..

[Brisc0]

Originally Posted by Reduck

yea, with all that rock you should have adequate natural filtration.
I've been running the Ghost for a while. It started out a bit noisy, but settled down. I have the air valve wfo, just maybe one thread left and I'm keeping the cup a bit low and wet still. It does what its supposed to. I'm not putting a heavy load on it, yet it still collects skimmate. Only feeding once a week.
Here is a pic of it from this morning..pardon my wiring mess. Just installed the new leds last week and have not decided the wiring path yet..

Thanks, very helpful!

[MarineDepot]

Originally Posted by Brisc0

Covered a lot more ground this weekend, more to come in a bit. Thanks for checking in on the build!

It looks amazing!

[ktownhero]

Excellent rock placement. More and more I love these more simplistic and artistic aquascapes. More is not always better and you have tons of room for inverts to grow.

[Brisc0]

Originally Posted by ktownhero

Excellent rock placement. More and more I love these more simplistic and artistic aquascapes. More is not always better and you have tons of room for inverts to grow.

Thanks, believe me I had about twice that much rock and fought like the devil to find a way to use all of it. In the end it kept looking like a pile of rocks crammed into a box. So I hit the web and looked for inspiration via image searches and found several cool minimalist aquascapes. I love the island with a trench look and the massive arch but didn't have the rock to pull off an arch well so I went with the former. Considering I will be getting a piece of live rock with my GARF diversity pack and then who knows what pieces as frags are purchased, I have tons of room to play around with coral placement.

I appreciate your feedback, more to come soon.

[Brisc0]

Got the Apex installed in the system this weekend also. I am really digging the utility I get with the pegboard under this cabinet. I got the Apex Jr. and the WXM plus an Energy Bar 8 for now but plan to add the PH expansion later on (also eyeballing that auto fish feeder some day). Its going to be 6+ months before I need to worry about dosing and keeping up with PH so investing in WXM and JR instead of the full on Apex made more sense starting out. The WXM seems to work flawlessly controlling the Radion and MP10 and Apex Fusion is brilliant and made serious strides since my Neptune AC3 Pro back in 2010.

I am not really running the lights right now but have the Apex programmed for the Little Rock, AR season table with lights that follow my local sunrise/sunset & moonrise / moonset as well as random clouds/storms. Also have a flow pattern that starts off slow in the morning moving to full wave action in the afternoon and then slacking back off at night. Very cool.

[4fishman]

Looks nice, I like the peg board idea. Go to Bulk Reef Supply, they have some great videos on how to hang the Radion fixture. Best of luck.

[Brisc0]

Hit a bit of a snag. I am installing into built in cabinets so I can't "drape" any cables behind the tank and into the stand. I had to cut a 1.25" cable port into the built in to get cables from the tank to the Apex.

Well, the MP10 is wired from pump to controller so I had no way to get it through the port. Luckily they built it smart and I was able to disconnect the pump, route the cable, and then put it back together.



I mounted the controller under the Radion LED light ballast. The pump was then placed on the left hand side of the tank which makes it almost impossible to notice from the primary viewing angles.

[Brisc0]

Finally to top things off (literally) I installed the Tunze Auto Top Off System (ATO). Its very handy how the little pump is designed to fit inside the neck of a "jug" type container which is exactly what I am using.
4 Gallon Top Off Reservoir (not final cable management / placement):


The Tunze installed easily into the IM 40 Gallon and I can't believe how impressed I am with the quality of this unit. This thing is top notch and while I wasn't sure when I bought it, its proven to definitely be worth the price.

[Brisc0]

There is always something fascinating to me about Skimmers. The AquaC's I ran back in the early 2000's were kind of bulk utility units that were total function over form. However the Reef Octopus I had going back in 2010 was stylish and just cool to look at. This Innovative Marine Ghost Desktop size skimmer is somewhere in between.

I am not sure if "Cute" is an appropriate term for a skimmer but it certainly is tiny.


Back when I had a Nano Reef and Nano Systems were really coming into their own the Nano Skimmer hit the market and just about every one I tried was complete garbage. However these things seem to be everywhere now and more closely resemble the full sized skimmers I have used in the past with great success. It was a tough call between this and the Cad Lights PLS-50 Elite but given that the Ghost was designed to fit my tank I went ahead and picked it up.

Currently the air valve is completely closed and the skimmer is just circulating water because I haven't cycled. Hopefully it will be good and broken in by the time I actually activate the air intake and start using it in production in a couple of months.

Here is the skimmer installed into the display and all in all the fit is really nice. There is a little bit of jankyness with the skimmer limiting flow from the adjacent overflow chamber to the skimmer compartment and I would certainly caution the use without an ATO installed as it will create a lot of "water flow noise".

However with an ATO installed the water level remains consistent (which you want anyway with skimmer operation to ensure your foam is similarly consistent anyway) so the point here, if you are using the IM 40 + Ghost desktop have good ATO or be ready to be on the ball with manual top off or else mileage may vary. I have already seen lots of threads/review about the issue for people without ATO and can pretty much call that issue "confirmed". I will post a good update after I have some bio-load and actually activate this thing in a few months when everything is starting to come together chemically and biologically.

[MarineDepot]

Loving the updates!

[Brisc0]

Well, here are a few shots of the majority of the work complete. I still have a heater (TBD) to install. Also the media reactors are still in the box as I haven't cycled yet and wanted to wait until it was complete.

The cabinet has everything loaded in and plenty of room for some storage baskets.

Cable management is still pretty clean out to the viewing area:

[brad65ford]

Looking great Brisc0, I'm really interested in seeing how you like your ghost, i have a hdro nano/slim skimmer I'm not sure if i'm going to run or get the ghost.

[Brisc0]

Originally Posted by MarineDepot

Loving the updates!

Thanks, picked up test kits and the XR30 tank mount from you guys yesterday. The mount for the light is just too sweet and will really make the tank/light look like one cohesive system.

Next up on the build log is my updated RO/DI system and ATO modifications. I am going to start on that tonight so posts should follow in the next couple of days. Once I get the test kits in I will start tracking the cycle and waiting patiently

[Brisc0]

Originally Posted by brad65ford

Looking great Brisc0, I'm really interested in seeing how you like your ghost, i have a hdro nano/slim skimmer I'm not sure if i'm going to run or get the ghost.

I will be sure and keep you posted. I am probably looking at about 8 weeks before conditions are right for the brown stuff.

[Reduck]

Great updates! looks great so far!
I ran into the same issue with the MP driver on my system with the same solution. I scratched my head for about 30 seconds before I grabbed the tools to take it apart..last thing I wanted to do is to cut a larger hole..or worse, move the tank and stand..

[Brisc0]

So with the EcoTech Summer Sale drawing to a close soon I am trying to decide if this system needs 1x MP10 or 2??!

So, the question is 2xMP10 on a 40G 23x18x16" tank overkill or freaking awesome?!

GO!