Turbosek

Looks great, but am curious about how you'll add rock and do maintenance with the back and sides black and without taking your lights down. Food for thought, a guy in my club ran a bed sheet behind his tank for aesthetics and if the need arose he could just take it off. He used velcro to hang it. You could also make/buy a slide rack for your lights to make it easier on yourself

Black back on tank came that way from manufacturer...i know, I wish it wasnt there. It is stuck on, so I figured I better leave it. I have room enough to reach all areas of the tank when the lights are removed. I thought about a track, but opted instead to just use spring-loaded clips and plugs to easily remove lights when needed. I can still do most reaching w/o moving lights if I needed to do something simple.

Perhaps you can put some simple 'under cabinet' LED fixtures on the ceiling so when you move the pendants, you still have a way to shine some light into the reef to see what you are doing. Those are low profile and would be handy.

Thanks for sharing your project with us.

I also have 2 T5 bulbs that span the width, toward the front of the tank. I can leave these there, and still move around in the tank. I did have to build a platform that allows me to stand 3 feet high over my sump, so I can reach all the way down into the tank. Works pretty slick, and I can just lift it out of the way when not in use.

Thanks Melev for your knowledge and inspiration with sump design and advice. Everything I learned was from your site, and made me feel comfortable about designing and building my sump.

I'm happy it helped. I was looking at your sump's layout.