My 150 gallon build w/pics

ok sweet ill look into everything! He is good doesnt pick at anything....If he does all well...my buddy owns a store and gives me alot of stuff for free that people will bring in or whatever so...if he picks...he picks lol

 

I think everything looks great. Your stand looks good, in fact I like the idea of using 1X trimmers to stiffen things while leaving room for sump and such. I will be using your ideas on my next stand.

As for your lighting fixture:
The construction is very well done quite professional.

However I do believe (and please take this as constructive criticism) that you could have spent a little more $$ on some decent reflectors and ballasts and severely cut down on wattage while actually increasing your light output. With no scientific basis I can intuitively say that you would get better light output from a couple 175W MH with good reflectors than the 250's you have with the what looks like fabricated flashing reflectors you have now.

I have learned that cutting corners with cash in this hobby is not the way to go, it ends up costing more in the end.

It definitely looks like you have a good handle on what you are doing though!

PS Those are definitely magnetic MH ballasts. Magnetic ballasts use a coil (big metal doohicky) and capacitor (funky sardine can lookin dood). Electronic ballasts are a single metal box with wires in and wires out with no wiring between components.