'Fringe Benefits'... On hold...

[BlueAbyss]

So I was doing some measuring today, and the stand that I had intended on using... well not really a stand, but that's beside the point... isn't going to have enough room to have a very large skimmer at all. I have a total of 16" of height where I want to put my sump, so with the height of the sump (around 13" with the trim on the tank) that leaves me with 3" of headroom, not enough to remove the cup on a skimmer. AND I'll have to pull out the sump to do any maintenance, requiring me to have spaflex shipped to me...

ARGH! Why didn't I think of this before?

So, now I need to build a stand. This is actually a blessing in disguise though, for a number of reasons.

1. It will cut down on noise, having all the components enclosed in a cabinet.
2. I can hide ALL of the plumbing by drilling a short side of the tank.
3. I can build an overflow into the same short side, saving some space in the tank AND allowing the tank to be viewable from 3 sides.

Hmm this is gonna work out to be cheaper in the long run, because I don't need to buy good looking equipment... nothing will be exposed. I can also use both MH and T5HO, a la retrofit kits. I still need to do some research on reflectors though...