Like many, I've been lurking on your thread for quite a while. I have a dream of building a large plywood system one day and your aquarium has been a great inspiration for that! It's been a lot of fun to watch everything come together.
I thought I would give my 0.02, and maybe there will be a few half decent ideas to help. For the rock structures, I really like the concept of having 3 islands, I think it will give you plenty of swimming room, 3d structure, and room to create a lot of flow. With that, one thing I like to think of when lighting large aquariums is where I plan to place corals, and what the best configuration for lighting will be. The nice thing about this aquarium is that that you don't need to illuminate the entire thing. You can tailor your lighting to be most intense where it is needed (I would suggest your MH fixtures be angled to cover each island if possible), other areas can be illuminated with simple LED fixtures where PAR is not necessarily needed (open sand space where there are no photosynthetic sessile invertebrates or corals).
Another thought would be adding more depth to the rockwork of each island. Thinking 3-4 years down the road with massive coral growth you'll want to make sure you have the room and strength in your rock structures to be able to withstand that coral growth.
For cable management I've used panduit wiring raceway in the past and it has been a dream when dealing with cable management. I think there are off brands that would be cheaper but it is 100% worth looking into for clean looking and easy cable management.
Last but not least, I think you have a great start to your stocking list! Fish are a ton of fun to think about, but I would also focus on what inverts you want to start with. I always suggest starting with copepods/amphipods/phyto dosing/sandbed worms/conch/etc. All the things that will help with the initial algal bloom and give you a great kickstart to the little guys that help the ecosystem move forward. (Aquaculture nursery farms and info pacific sea farms are both places I highly recommend and have ordered from many times, feel free to DM me if you have any questions about what they offer and what I would suggest
)A few fish I would suggest looking at:
- Vlamingi tang
- Dussumieri tang
- Any of the genicanthus angels (they're touted as the only true reef safe angels, my bias is towards Genicanthus melanospilos as I had a male/female pair in my 180)
- I would second scchase on shooting for larger schools of fish than what you're currently thinking. I've seen his tank in person and it's gigantic and the fish in it now are large but it still feels like it has a lot of space.
- midas blenny
- leopard wrasse pair
- citron gobies (once acros get large as they tend to lay eggs on the underside of branches)
- Royal gramma pair
- square back anthias (they get larger than the squampinnus anthias and are beautiful imo)
- tomini tang
- cleaner wrasse pair
That's all I have for now, I apologize for the tome! I can't wait to see this beast full.
