I am new to the forum and have been lurking for the last few months. I have enjoyed reading other people’s comments and looking at other peoples builds. I have only been in the hobby for a few years and certainly don’t have much for expertise but certainly willing to express opinions where I think I can help. I just found out about this forum while I was purchasing some equipment for this tank. It still is a work in progress and guess it will be for quite a while which is the nature of a tank anyway.
I just got an Innovative Marine Nuvo Int 200. I was scouring the internet trying to find other builds but didn’t really find much for my specific tank. Hopefully this might interest or help others. It also isn’t completely put together, so I am always open to suggestions/criticism, so comments are appreciated.
My previous tank was a Red Sea Reefer 250. I wanted to move all the rock and livestock to the new tank as that was part of the reason we wanted to upgrade. Wasn’t sure if I was going to have to cycle the new tank for a while and run two tanks or just move things. Since I wanted to use the rock, I decided to just go with the move everything option and hope for the best. I worked with Jen at New Wave, not only getting the bulk of the equipment but also had her do the aqua scaping. I knew my Reefer had some rock placement issues and even the previous tank I was never happy with it. I figured her expertise in the area would be more beneficial than me just making a big rock pile. I sure am happy with the final look of the tank.
Upgrading from this Reefer 250. All the livestock with the exception of the massively overgrown pulsating xenia were moved.
Might as well start off by listing the equipment I am using:
Tank: IM INT 200 with their APS stand
Sump: Trigger Systems Tritton 44
Filter: Red Sea ReefMat 1200
Skimmer: Reef Octopus Regal 200SSS
Heater Controller: Innovative Marine Helio with 500-Watt Finnex Titanium Heater
Return: Reef Octopus VarioS-8
Auto Top Off: Tunze 3155
Lights/Mounts: (4x) Red Sea ReefLED 160s with Red Sea Mounts
Plumbing: Spears Valves and BRS schedule 80 fittings with Schedule 40 pipe
Power Heads: (1x) Red Sea ReefWave 45 & (2x) EcoTech Marine VorTech MP40
Controller: Neptune Apex with (2x) EB832, I/O Breakout Box, FMM, DOS
Sand: CaribSea Fiji pink
Auxiliary fill pump: Reef Octopus VarioS-2
RO tank: Aqueon 55 gallon
NSW tank: Aqueon 75 gallon
The tank is installed in a finished basement so it is on carpet with a concrete floor. Behind the tank there is a semi-finished closet that is under the stairs. This is where the RO tank, NSW tank, a secondary control cabinet, and my saltwater mixing station. This whole room is still coming together. It will also be where I plan on housing a refugium tank if/when I do. I added 20A circuit to power all the equipment on both sides, so I do not need to worry about anything outside of the tank tripping the circuit.
Installed....mostly. Still working on things. Best thing I found for "Finished" look for hole in the wall was a pet door. A bit bigger than desired but it has plenty of room and is behind the tank anyway so no one will really see it.
Just roughed in and nothing actually working yet. hopefully getting to the AWC soon. The white and blue 1/4" tubing runs to my HVAC room about 30 feet away where the RO system and floor drain is located. Blue line is RO water and the White will by the dirty saltwater. Cabinet is 3/4" unfinished plywood only about 3 inches deep.
There is only a single 3/4” return in the middle of this tank. I was kind of bummed when I realize that since the EXT 200 has a return on both ends of the tank. So on my main return I added ‘T’ section with a valve on both sides. One valve goes to my return pump and the other goes to my auxiliary pump in my NSW tank. This way, during water changes, I can shut the main return valve and open the aux valve and fill to the required water level with the return and not have to poor buckets in from the top. I guess I used to just pull a brute container over and fill it with a pump from there, but this give me a little more water volume and I do not need to worry about sloshing saltwater around rolling it over to the tank. I also plan on do auto water changes with the DOS from this tank.
About the best picture I can get of the plumbing. Not all the rock from the previous tank was used in display so it ended up here to try and help get this tank going. Wish ReefMat could be moved to left but plumbing is restrictive. Still plenty of room to change the roll though.
I was originally planning on doing my saltwater mixing in the NSW tank. That is why I went with a 55-gallon RO tank. I was going to make a bunch of RO, transfer to NSW for mixing but since I will be doing AWC from the tank I will probably keep with mixing in a brute and transfer to this tank via a pump. Not sure yet as I have not even done any water changes. Hope having a 55-gallon RO tank doesn’t bite me down the road. It is nice not having to monitor the level as often as I was with the 10-gallon tank though. Will be adding water level monitoring sensors to both the RO and NSW tank in near future.
The main drain runs down through the gate valve, into sump, and onto the ReefMat. This tank has two emergency drains on it. I have seen it listed as a drain, secondary drain, and emergency drain but I have also seen it listed as a drain with emergency and secondary emergency. From a suggestion from a friend, I originally plumbed my secondary drain right below the gate valve so that all water would flow through the ReefMat. Turns out that was a stupid idea as all it did was mess up the siphon on the main drain and sound like a toilet was constantly flushing. Thanks to the unions it wasn’t too big of a deal to change, so I just changed the main drain to gate valve and ReefMat while the first e-drain is plumbed to a filter sock. The secondary e-drain just drops to the skimmer section.
Actually, have plenty of room to adjust the gate valve from front but the side door opens to give plenty of access.
The corrugated tubing of the ReefMat is nice but also limiting. Feels a little tight but works for now.
The ReefMat took up the majority of the refugium section in the sump. I am not planning on doing a refugium right away so if down the road I want to add one I will add another pump that goes to a small tank with an overflow that will be in the room behind the tank. The overflow from the refugium can just return to the sump via gravity and I should not have to ever worry about overflowing from that. Future problems anyways.
I like the tank and the stand however there are a few drawbacks I quickly ran into. First off is the tank. Both the INT and EXT 200 tanks have a 3-inch lip of glass around the top edge. I have already found this great for cleaning as I do not splash water over the sides like I did in my Reefer. The downside was I really wanted my lights to hang on the back of the tank. I could not find any images of how people mounted lights on these without hanging them. Since the stand is extruded aluminum, I ended up getting some 80/20 and mounting it vertical from the legs to the top of the glass. Then I bought some aluminum bar stock and mounted them across the back. I was able to mount the two middle lights from the overflow section but the outside two are mounted on the bars I added. Wish I would have taken a picture from behind the tank, but I forgot and it way too late now.
The second major drawback to the stand is there is no walls, just doors, and the back is open. This means I needed to make my own control cabinet just to mount things two. It turned out alright for not having any design.
The control cabinet made out of 3/4" plywood and painted black. It is about 6 inches deep with a couple shelves to hold power supplies. It also has a surge protector that powers the Red Sea equipment. Can just use the Red Sea App instead of wasting the Neptune outlets for that.
Access to control cabinet from the side of the tank.
Current livestock:
One Spot Foxface
Blue Hippo Tang
Christmas Wrasse
Royal Gramma
Pair of Ocellaris Clownfish
Banggai Cardinal
Coral Banded Shrimp
Few Conch Snails and various other snails/hermits
Not much for corals. Just a few zoas, hammers, torch, mushrooms, and Anemones.
Hope it was worth the read and not too boring. I tried to include pictures to help explain. Feel free to comment or give suggestions. Still learning a lot of things and looking forward to seeing other peoples progress in this hobby! Have a great day.
I just got an Innovative Marine Nuvo Int 200. I was scouring the internet trying to find other builds but didn’t really find much for my specific tank. Hopefully this might interest or help others. It also isn’t completely put together, so I am always open to suggestions/criticism, so comments are appreciated.
My previous tank was a Red Sea Reefer 250. I wanted to move all the rock and livestock to the new tank as that was part of the reason we wanted to upgrade. Wasn’t sure if I was going to have to cycle the new tank for a while and run two tanks or just move things. Since I wanted to use the rock, I decided to just go with the move everything option and hope for the best. I worked with Jen at New Wave, not only getting the bulk of the equipment but also had her do the aqua scaping. I knew my Reefer had some rock placement issues and even the previous tank I was never happy with it. I figured her expertise in the area would be more beneficial than me just making a big rock pile. I sure am happy with the final look of the tank.
Upgrading from this Reefer 250. All the livestock with the exception of the massively overgrown pulsating xenia were moved.
Might as well start off by listing the equipment I am using:
Tank: IM INT 200 with their APS stand
Sump: Trigger Systems Tritton 44
Filter: Red Sea ReefMat 1200
Skimmer: Reef Octopus Regal 200SSS
Heater Controller: Innovative Marine Helio with 500-Watt Finnex Titanium Heater
Return: Reef Octopus VarioS-8
Auto Top Off: Tunze 3155
Lights/Mounts: (4x) Red Sea ReefLED 160s with Red Sea Mounts
Plumbing: Spears Valves and BRS schedule 80 fittings with Schedule 40 pipe
Power Heads: (1x) Red Sea ReefWave 45 & (2x) EcoTech Marine VorTech MP40
Controller: Neptune Apex with (2x) EB832, I/O Breakout Box, FMM, DOS
Sand: CaribSea Fiji pink
Auxiliary fill pump: Reef Octopus VarioS-2
RO tank: Aqueon 55 gallon
NSW tank: Aqueon 75 gallon
The tank is installed in a finished basement so it is on carpet with a concrete floor. Behind the tank there is a semi-finished closet that is under the stairs. This is where the RO tank, NSW tank, a secondary control cabinet, and my saltwater mixing station. This whole room is still coming together. It will also be where I plan on housing a refugium tank if/when I do. I added 20A circuit to power all the equipment on both sides, so I do not need to worry about anything outside of the tank tripping the circuit.
Installed....mostly. Still working on things. Best thing I found for "Finished" look for hole in the wall was a pet door. A bit bigger than desired but it has plenty of room and is behind the tank anyway so no one will really see it.
Just roughed in and nothing actually working yet. hopefully getting to the AWC soon. The white and blue 1/4" tubing runs to my HVAC room about 30 feet away where the RO system and floor drain is located. Blue line is RO water and the White will by the dirty saltwater. Cabinet is 3/4" unfinished plywood only about 3 inches deep.
There is only a single 3/4” return in the middle of this tank. I was kind of bummed when I realize that since the EXT 200 has a return on both ends of the tank. So on my main return I added ‘T’ section with a valve on both sides. One valve goes to my return pump and the other goes to my auxiliary pump in my NSW tank. This way, during water changes, I can shut the main return valve and open the aux valve and fill to the required water level with the return and not have to poor buckets in from the top. I guess I used to just pull a brute container over and fill it with a pump from there, but this give me a little more water volume and I do not need to worry about sloshing saltwater around rolling it over to the tank. I also plan on do auto water changes with the DOS from this tank.
About the best picture I can get of the plumbing. Not all the rock from the previous tank was used in display so it ended up here to try and help get this tank going. Wish ReefMat could be moved to left but plumbing is restrictive. Still plenty of room to change the roll though.
I was originally planning on doing my saltwater mixing in the NSW tank. That is why I went with a 55-gallon RO tank. I was going to make a bunch of RO, transfer to NSW for mixing but since I will be doing AWC from the tank I will probably keep with mixing in a brute and transfer to this tank via a pump. Not sure yet as I have not even done any water changes. Hope having a 55-gallon RO tank doesn’t bite me down the road. It is nice not having to monitor the level as often as I was with the 10-gallon tank though. Will be adding water level monitoring sensors to both the RO and NSW tank in near future.
The main drain runs down through the gate valve, into sump, and onto the ReefMat. This tank has two emergency drains on it. I have seen it listed as a drain, secondary drain, and emergency drain but I have also seen it listed as a drain with emergency and secondary emergency. From a suggestion from a friend, I originally plumbed my secondary drain right below the gate valve so that all water would flow through the ReefMat. Turns out that was a stupid idea as all it did was mess up the siphon on the main drain and sound like a toilet was constantly flushing. Thanks to the unions it wasn’t too big of a deal to change, so I just changed the main drain to gate valve and ReefMat while the first e-drain is plumbed to a filter sock. The secondary e-drain just drops to the skimmer section.
Actually, have plenty of room to adjust the gate valve from front but the side door opens to give plenty of access.
The corrugated tubing of the ReefMat is nice but also limiting. Feels a little tight but works for now.
The ReefMat took up the majority of the refugium section in the sump. I am not planning on doing a refugium right away so if down the road I want to add one I will add another pump that goes to a small tank with an overflow that will be in the room behind the tank. The overflow from the refugium can just return to the sump via gravity and I should not have to ever worry about overflowing from that. Future problems anyways.
I like the tank and the stand however there are a few drawbacks I quickly ran into. First off is the tank. Both the INT and EXT 200 tanks have a 3-inch lip of glass around the top edge. I have already found this great for cleaning as I do not splash water over the sides like I did in my Reefer. The downside was I really wanted my lights to hang on the back of the tank. I could not find any images of how people mounted lights on these without hanging them. Since the stand is extruded aluminum, I ended up getting some 80/20 and mounting it vertical from the legs to the top of the glass. Then I bought some aluminum bar stock and mounted them across the back. I was able to mount the two middle lights from the overflow section but the outside two are mounted on the bars I added. Wish I would have taken a picture from behind the tank, but I forgot and it way too late now.
The second major drawback to the stand is there is no walls, just doors, and the back is open. This means I needed to make my own control cabinet just to mount things two. It turned out alright for not having any design.
The control cabinet made out of 3/4" plywood and painted black. It is about 6 inches deep with a couple shelves to hold power supplies. It also has a surge protector that powers the Red Sea equipment. Can just use the Red Sea App instead of wasting the Neptune outlets for that.
Access to control cabinet from the side of the tank.
Current livestock:
One Spot Foxface
Blue Hippo Tang
Christmas Wrasse
Royal Gramma
Pair of Ocellaris Clownfish
Banggai Cardinal
Coral Banded Shrimp
Few Conch Snails and various other snails/hermits
Not much for corals. Just a few zoas, hammers, torch, mushrooms, and Anemones.
Hope it was worth the read and not too boring. I tried to include pictures to help explain. Feel free to comment or give suggestions. Still learning a lot of things and looking forward to seeing other peoples progress in this hobby! Have a great day.
