Lighting

For lighting, I chose to use a combination of Metal Halide bulbs and VHO bulbs, as I plan to keep SPS, which require intense lighting.  The equipment is as follows:

Metal Halide
I'm running 3 Metal Halide bulbs, each 250 watts.  For a bulb, I chose to use the XM 10000K.  The MH bulbs are being powered by 3 Vertex Ballasts.

VHO
I'm running two strips of URI VHO Actinic bulbs along each side of the light cage, adding up to 4 in total.  These VHO bulbs are powered by a single Icecap Ballast.

Light Cage and Reflectors
I made the light cage myself using strips of angled aluminum, riveted together.  I chose to use aluminum because it resists corrosion and its extremely light, which is better for suspending as it keeps the weight to a minimum.  There are a total of 3 Spider Reflectors riveted to the light cage.  The cage is suspended by chain, which makes it easy to adjust the distance of my lights from the surface of the water.  With new bulbs, I'll raise the height for a week or two, to allow burn in and to prevent shocking the corals.

In the future, I plan on re-implementing a more efficient way of suspending the lights (ie., mechanical pulley system).

Sand Wall

Like most people, I chose to make the middle of my sump a refugium. I also wanted to use finer sand as a deep sand bed. So in went the sand, probably equivalent in size to fine sugar and after awhile it looked like this:

The sand kept blowing up as the water came down from the baffles. The issue was that I swapped the location for my baffles with that of the return pump... which was great because it expanded my evaporation space, meaning less frequent top off. However, I didn't foresee the water trickling down the baffles and kicking up the sand. Not a big issue... I just needed to create a "sand barrier".

Once installed, the result is the following:

Now, the sand is no longer where the water comes down.