[SuperFudge]

Hiya Dan,

You can place any of the tanks you wish below another,but the lowest point of water will act as your sump.....so it is difficult to use it as a prop tank too,with water levels fluctuating and a heavier water flow(the total volume thru all tanks will pass thru)it is also hard to light this lower one properly(especially for SPS) needing the extra room for halide or heavy lighting.....so you end up making your stand to accomodate room for the lighting,but then you also need to upgrade pumps to get to the higher tanks,or in the least losing head.

If you do not think you will be adding a whole lot more in the way of tanks on to this system,IMVHO it would be best to use the 25 as your sump(should be fine handling the extra water from the 35 & 55)if it is ran at about 1/3+ full as your sump.
And place 35 and 55 side by side as prop tanks(make tank tops flush not the bottoms)
You will have to drill sump for the mag 12 intake,(should be ok size if power heads are also used for circ.)
If your tanks are side by side like this,they still can be seperated incase of emergency(one tank crashing or w.h.y.)and ran as normal thru the sump.....without shutting down the whole system.
By using a tee and valves on the pump feed line,and each tank having its own line down to a common sump.


You might be able to toss a couple of live rocks in it so they dont take up room in the main tanks.

Its more practical to place them all stacked if you dont have the extra room becuase this way a smaller main pump can be used...only feeding the top tank,and gravity feeding the ones below,......!BUT! this also makes for huge headaches when fragging and placing,lighting,general maintanence and others...

Also MVHO,to have a nice sandbed in each of the proptanks for this reason...if they are seperated,they still have some filtration when cut off from the other tank.
Food(pods)for the SPS also loves the sandbeds.

Racks are alright i guess,personally i would avoid them if you have good light,for me they just become something extra to keep free of nasty algeas(snails cant fit in the small squares)
It doesnt really give you any extra room as the space below just becomes dark anyways when the shelf is loaded with frags.
They also are difficult,when frags grow onto it(wich will happen [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img])Softies are worse!
You have to somehow get frags off with side cutters or a razor when they are attached to a whole shelf.
I have placed these shelfs only on the outskirts of the lighting,but the footprint of my frag tank is 28"x40",so your 55 will have way more light on the edges than mine with the same amount of light.

HTH,Marc.

[ 27 December 2001: Message edited by: Fudge ]