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Fishfoo's IM170 EXT (1 Viewer)

Fishfoo

Fishfoo

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IM170 Tank Build starts at post: https://www.tcmas.org/forums/threads/fishfoos-im170-ext.68904/post-752439

Last November, my fiancé and I purchased our first home, and right away I started thinking of where a new larger tank could go. Some new house tasks have delayed the build a bit (and continue to do so), but I’ve made some progress and am now ready to share my journey with you all!

The tank was purchased used from Adam (@Adam G ) in March. It’s a Red Sea Reefer 525XL that he kept in great shape during his two years of use. With it came an Artfully Acrylic Clearview lid, and a 25W Aqua UV sterilizer.

 
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First order of business: With a bigger tank I’ll need larger water changes, and preferably no more carrying 5 gallon buckets around. After searching the forums, I had a general idea of what I wanted to do for a water mixing station.

For my RODI unit, I used a tee fitting from my basement sink and from there it goes through the cabinet and out the other side of the wall, into our unfinished laundry room. There is a utility sink next to the washer and dryer that the waste water dumps (trickles) into, and the rodi water goes up into the rafters and down out to the other side of the utility/storage room, where I will have the water mixing station.

 
For the water mixing station itself, I went with 1” sch 80 pvc pipe and a series of ball valves that would allow me to use one pump for everything. I also left both of the ends open incase I needed to add something down the line, or incase the power goes out and I need water. The storage tanks are 65 gallon vertical tanks. Fortunately a place in St. Louis Park had them so I didn’t have to pay for freight shipping.

This was my first time pvc plumbing as my previous tanks have all been AIO nano’s, so it was a learning experience for sure. Overall it was pretty straightforward once I knew all of the fittings I’d need, however figuring those out took some time. After cutting, fitting, and gluing, it passed the leak test on the first try. Success! for the 50ft. hose I purchased an outdoor hose hanger which helps keep it out of the way when not in use.



 
I am moving you to my “big hitter” tab within my excel tracker. Nice tank and storage tanks..

You just bumped hoho off the tracker...
 
Onto the plumbing: I didn’t like the stock plumbing of the RSR, but found out that it’s all metric plumbing and OEM fittings. Time for more research… After ordering countless different “metric to standard” conversion adapters that didn’t work, and looking at how others converted theirs, the easiest and most popular way was to purchase two extra OEM return adapters from Red Sea and use a 3/4” to 1” MPTxSlip adapter with ~10 wraps of teflon tape on the threaded end. At first I was a bit sketched out by this, but upon testing it out myself the 3/4” threaded male end fit almost perfectly with the 25mm OEM female threaded end of the plumbing. And that was without any teflon tape. Definitely a much more snug fit than I would’ve expected. Below is what the conversion looks like. Note: the small one is the older version of the return fitting that originally comes with the tank. The taller two are the new versions that I ordered for the main and emergency drains.

 
For the standard plumbing section, I plan on making a manifold that will feed the UV Sterilizer and a couple other things that I haven’t decided on just yet. I have most of the pieces for this, but am unable to proceed further until the custom sump I’ve ordered comes in. Should be here next week sometime.

Tyler over at Elite-Aquatics was who I went with for the sump and he DID NOT disappoint! I told him that I wanted to use a ClariSea SK-5000, and he had me send it over to him for him to build the sump around. I figured he would just make the first chamber large enough for me to place the ClariSea into it, but he sent me some pics of it basically finished and it blew my expectations out of the water. Super excited to see this sump in person.







 
Reefking said:
I am moving you to my “big hitter” tab within my excel tracker. Nice tank and storage tanks..

You just bumped hoho off the tracker...
Click to expand...

That is a tough one, I was just going to ask you a couple tax questions, but I will find another source.
 
While I wait for the sump, I’ve been messing around with some aquaecapes and think I finally landed on one I like. It’s hard to capture how it looks in a picture compared to in person where you can see the many points of view, however I tried my best. My basement lighting isn’t the brightest so that didn’t help things either. Also a huge thanks to Will (@Leicester56) for the extra live rock!

Oh I also moved the tank to its final spot and removed the black background. Saw some other build threads where people did this and against white/lighter walls it looked really cool… So I went for it.







IMG_4499



 
Looks great!
Sump or no sump, let's get some saltwater in there!
 
For lighting I wanted to try something different and go with a T5 dominant light. I also still wanted the pop that LED's provided, So the 48" ATI Powermodule Hybrid was the winner. I ordered it from Germany as that was the only way to get it in white, and it took ~1 month to get delivered. Since it came from Germany I had to purchase a US power cord, which was only ~$10 on amazon. The fixture is beautiful and very well built. So much so that if I can stand the light bleed I will go without a canopy. I used the ATI hanging kit to mount the fixture from the ceiling, and love how it isn't an eye sore, unlike some other mounts out there. I then drilled a 2" hole in the wall and inserted a white desk grommet to make it look a little nicer. This keeps the power cord hidden (somewhat), and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.


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[url=https://flic.kr/p/2fW9bGr]

In other tank related news, I rinsed 90lbs of Tropic Eden Reef Flakes (sorry BB fans) and am letting it dry out. Very exciting stuff :p I don't think I'll use it all but we'll see.
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Bare bottoms are for lazy people!
I say "Go big or go home!"; thus the ReBorn substrate.

I really like the solution for the light fixture's power cord. I also don't like to see any cords dropping behind the tank. (Now if it came in white, that'd be daBomb!)
 
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