Time for an update...
I had a couple of floods because I never made teeth for my overflow box and critters went down the overflow/water slide. It's the old problem of always taking care of things for others and then not wanting to do more of the same work for myself. Needles to say the floods damaged the wood on the cabinets.
It took 3 years but I finally made the acrylic teeth for the overflow box. Forgot to take a picture of it so I'll add it below later.
Here is what the stand looked like before I rebuilt it.
I didn't want to take the chance of having to rebuild it again so I found 1/2" PVC Plastic sheets to rebuild it. This was a lot more costly than plywood or MDF but didn't need to be painted and it can't be damaged by moisture or even a flood. The only part remaining from the old stand was the 2x4 frame below the tank. That was coated in epoxy paint before the panels were attached to cover it.
I went for the RedSea look but I'm thinking of adding some trim to the doors to make it less modern and more fitting with the trim around the entry. That may take some time.
The most exciting part about this rebuild was that I could learn from my mistakes in the past. I had 16"x8" openings on the top. With the tank being 31" tall this really made it hard to get in there if a frag fell or I needed to do anything. Now the openings are 22"x16" so I can and I have stuck my entire upper body in there now to clean things up. What a difference this makes!
New equipment includes a DC return pump and 2 Echotech Quiet Drive MP40's. This works nicely by I'm thinking of adding more flow.
The entire issue I have had with maintaining SPS turned out to be low salinity. I was running the tank at 30ppt vs. the needed 35ppt. What a freaking stupid rookie issue to have. Now that it's corrected I'm collecting SPS again slowly.
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