Question Wesley. With such a large and tall cabinet why are you plumbing your sump to downstairs anyway, when you have so much room?
There are a few reasons. It's the noise of the pump, noise of the pump for the skimmer, and the light from the refugium, the occasional flooding of the skimmers, want to have a bigger algae scrubber. Like to have a couple of fans blowing on the water surface, but the fans are too noisy! Also, i got a chiller but it's making the living room too hot, so gotta plumb to another room. The only room I can do it is downstairs. So, I might as well, move everything down.
With everything downstairs, I can even use a 75 gal as my sump! :D
There are 2 reasons of having such big stand. One is that when I need to have everything under there, i could. Two, I just like the tank to be more to my eye level. Well, not quite, but better.
After I get it up and running, I'm going to make a couple of shelves there. My wife would be happy. :)
Sorry I didn't take the time to read the whole thing, but I remember on the first page reading that you were dreading making doors...what if you did some sort of roll-up/accordian/sliding door thing that would limit the # of doors but still give you the big opening?
LOL. That would be even more complicated. I rather make 4 doors.