Years ago I was giving my wife a hard time about buying things on sale and told her, "you'd buy a rock if it were on sale!" Guess she gets the last laugh now...
Despite purchasing a new truck last weekend and Christmas getting in the way, I was able to collect enough pennies to get the stand and canopy builds under way (local builder).
I'm looking at things a bit different with this build. While I've been in the hobby 20+ years, I'd never had an SPS dominant system until recently and I went a bit willy nilly in the 75g with regard to placement. Because of this, I've spent a considerable amount of time moving things around to create a more homogeneous look across the tank. Complicating things, I didn't know the species of the vast majority of acropora frags I was getting so it was hard to know what they'd look like as they matured.
In a bit of a departure from the more vibrant all-in-one "named" corals that are center stage these days, I want contrasting colonies next to one another; I want yellow acroporas next to blues, greens next to reds, deep purples next to whites, etc..
Other major considerations were placement based on species. Taller growth patterns will be at the back of the tank, tabling species will be low down and toward the front and/or side so they don't shade the corals below them, and encrusting montis/leptos will get their own rock structures on the sand bed so they cant grow onto the main structures (reducing husbandry) but they will all come together to provide that one-two, knock-out punch!
In other news, I've picked up a couple of Kessil A360WEs to replace the Radions I was originally going to use for the build and have a couple more on the way. As it stands, I'm planning on using four Kessil A360WEs and three 80w actinic T5s but I may switch to five Kessils and two T5s.
I was thinking of building my own stand based of the rocket engineer design on one forums ive found. I have all the tools to build the stand. But, if you dont mind me asking, how much did you get your stand built locally for? Thanks and I love your build so far. Thanks for answering my previous lighting question as well.