MillerTime 180 gal Build

Hey, that looks like its going to be a fun build! Just wondering if the stand will be able to hold the weight of the tank? I don't know much about that stuff but the sand looks kind of tall so was not sure if it would buckle or be good.

 

Are you going to have enough space where the steps are to put lights and have access to that side?

 

Ive done an inwall before we moved to Iowa I had an issue with the wall. My stand was apart of the wall and when I filled it up after time the sheet rock bowed out a bit. If I ever do it again I will make the stand separate from the wall and make it more of a picture frame look

 

I guess just make sure the wall part of the stand is well supported

 

This is what the plumbing looks like on my current in wall...

About as simple as it gets. The overflows drain into the left refugium chamber and the return pump is on the right chamber. It just tees off and goes back to the return plumbing in the overflows. There's an additional pipe in the last chamber which goes to my external skimmer.

And this is what my plumbing looked like on my old 180g in wall. I wanted the sump out from under the stand so I could have more space to operate. It just drained into one end of the 55g sump and the return pump was on the end. I couldn't find any pictures of this during the 5 years it was running. But I did have a skimmer in there.

 

+1 Jeff at LifeReef is awesome. I'm rocking a 76" skimmer from him on my 400g.

 

Have you thought about the trim details yet? I assume you're going to put trim around the tank and make it look like a picture frame? Note that you don't want the front edge of your tank resting on dry wall so you need some kind of return trim to cover up the edge of the drywall. For my first in-wall the builder already had the trim done and I simply pushed the tank up to the completed trim. For my second in-wall I got the tank positioned behind the drywall cutout first and then had to figure out the trim after the tank was already there... this resulted in a lengthy quest to get everything matched up perfectly and wasn't completed until about 9 months after the tank was running.

The benefit of the second approach was it allowed me to make sure I had the trim covering things like the edges of the tank and the gap at the top above the water line. I had light bleeding through on my first in-wall and it always bugged me. In the pic below you can see the waterline and the edges of the aquarium..

Didn't make that mistake in the second build... no light peaking through.

But it looked like this for a long time...

 

Millertime,
Love the setup. That's a nearly identical setup to what I have. I echo the comments about trim. The only difference is I handle my automated water changes from a mixing station kept offline. I use a spectrapure ATO pump system. I do keep my auto-top off RO water inline though right from the RODI as you have in the proposal. I just chose to keep it offline for the ability to clean it out easier when the inevitable gunk builds up in it. Either way. Love the proposed build. The pics here aren't great as they just are from my archive but if you need/want anything specific just let me know. Looks like our setups will be similar all said and done. Good luck!
(Hey - only FYI, no sales pitch. I just got online today to post a 72in rack of 5 AI sol blue's) They are came off my tank yesterday and work flawlessly. Going to sell them cheap as I already have 5 others and just don't need 10 at this point. I won't take them off the rack if anyone wants to buy them set up. The post will have more info)