480gl elos braceless earthquake trap

Unexpected burden was that the cabinetry and supporting structure weight tipped the opinion of the structural engineer into adding more support below. That wasn't in the original budget...but again what can you do.
 
Here's yet another angle. Hard to capture the 48" depth but it actually looks deep now in person, particularly since i added the black background. Also was just looking at the front view i posted a few minutes ago and it's kind of funny because it no longer looks like two islands (which it is), the "ultimate" stag in the middle has almost completely filled the space.
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In order to make it look less like a block they build the wall out 18" on each side and then built the cabinetry from there. Thus, the tank goes a ways back from where you see the plaster end.
 
One other surprise for me has been a proliferation of SPS coral growing on the sand after chunks have broken off and i've just left them there. Some of these have now merged and are growing together, and a few zoas have joined in as well. I'm running out of sand in the middle in particular. You can't see much of this in any of the pictures because the large cap (supposed to be a Len Sy cap but i doubt it) blocks the view. I'll try and get a picture of this next time i get the camera out.
 
Beautiful, simply beautiful.

You have some mad reefing skills :)

Should be tank of the month!!!!
 
Well, i made a few mistakes in setting up my refugium and decided it was time for a redu. First, my 125gl refugium sat on a shelf that i insisted upon using 4"x4" posts laterally instead, as everyone suggested, using 2"x6" or 2"x8"s. Turns out everyone else (including a thread here on RC) was right, as the 4"x4"s warped a bit, enough to leave a 1/8" gap between plywood base and acrylic tank in the middle. My error was further compounded by not using styrafoam underneath the tank which would have compensated some. I cut out the styro so my gravity drain feed to the refuguim had enough slope.
 
My other problem was i started with a 4" deep sand bed in fuge, which by now was 3" as sand dissolved. That with some live rock, some poorly performing macro and the whole thing was starting to become a nutrient sink rather than part of the solution. So, i took fuge apart, cleaned up and made a new stand based on design here on RC (rocketengineer's i believe).
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Then, with the space created on my crooked shelf with the new floor stand for the fuge, i added three 20gl RDSBs. I used an old 20gl acrylic tank i had and two big buckets from Ace. In the acrylic i added 8" of sand (little worried about its strength) and in the buckets 12". I fed the acrylic out of my return manifold and the two buckets from an eheim. I think the changes should help with nutrient levels after they get worked in for a while. Two weeks so far and no visible signs of missing my old fuge in terms of parameters. Here's the crooked shelf now:
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Going forward, i'm thinking about changing my return so that i have higher turnover from DT to sump. I have hammerhead return but outlets to tank are through eductors which greatly reduce volume but are great for flow in the DT. Thus, if i remove the eductors i'll have to add a couple more powerheads to compensate for water movement loss within the DT. Once i get more flow between sump and DT then i'll either add ozone or biopellet/reactor to process more nutrients, probably not both. My goal is to make it easier to increase my bioload but keep nusiance algae and cyno down. Right now i have a bit of both despite only 16 fish in 1000gl of water.
 
This is my dream tank! it looks way better with the "cabinets" then it did rimless imo. Now what was the point of rimless if it is covered by a canopy lol?
 
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