What size holes you need drilled? You're welcome to borrow my bits if I have the size you're looking for.

I need from 3/4" bulkhead holes up to 1.5" bulkhead holes

Sweet Yeah I'll take you up on that. I have to go buy a bunch of dry rock from Red Coral soon here and i'll start the aquascape. I'm going for three islands for a minimalist type look in the display, so the fish have lots of swimming room. Thats why I decided on the three sump idea, so that I could have tonnes of biological filtration that didn't have to come from rock in the display.

I might just take you up on that Greg! Do you have lots of glass lying around to make the baffles?

Nice build.

Just wondering, is it ok for metal halides to be that close to the water?

I have bits for 1", 1.5" and 2" bulkheads. You could go with 1" bulkheads and step it down to 3/4" pipe if you want (I say just go with 1" but that's just me). Anyhow if that works just send me a PM.

It will be raised about 4" off the surface when the canopy is on. It's just sitting there for testing.

I do has some glass just not sure how much.

So I need some advice on my overflow setup. This thing came stock with 1 X 3/4" bulkhead and 1 X 1" bulkhead in each overflow. So it was a Durso setup and the 3/4" was probably for a return line.

So with the difference in the hole size, should I just go with the Durso setup? I've had them before and just find them a little noisey. However it did come with a brand new set of durso pipes I can use. I would love to do a herbie, but with the different sized holes, It would be sketchy to have a 1" main and a 3/4" emergency...no?

I'm also having trouble with the layout of the sumps as well. I was going to stack them one on top of another, but now it's not looking like I will have the room to stack them all. So I think I'm going to have to re-design the whole thing :-(

I don't think that is a problem at all. It depends on how much flow you are going to drop through those drains. Keep in mind that you have 2 primary and 2 emergency drains. Realistically, I doubt you will have a blockage in BOTH primaries at the same time. Also, the primaries don't tend to just stop dead suddenly, they are more likely to just block slightly, transferring only a portion of flow to the emergency drains.

Leave the emergency drains as straight pipes so you'll hear them if they become active.

Finally, just test it after. Block a drain and see what happens!