New here, can use some advice/recommendations

[S3PANG]

Great!!! Ok he used live sand... If it was play sand from hardware store my next guess would have been to much silica in the water that the algae was feeding on. If there is big chunks that you can just pull off peel it.

Yep! I can tell you that he didn't really cut any major corners with the setup in terms of quality of materials, and it is a basic reef setup with just the lighting, skimmer and a sump w/ filter sock. The only thing the tank could use more of right away is live rock. Speaking of which, what's the best way to clean the rock off? Just pull it out into old tank water, scrub it with a brush and then go back in?

 

[S3PANG]

Ok, so I have an update along with some photos. (From now on I'll just refer to it as my tank to make it easier :thumb. Over the weekend I made some changes to the tank, including the installation of the additional powerhead. I adjusted the return tubes to aim at the top to keep the surface water moving, and now have 2 powerheads (850 gph) aimed basically at each other on opposite ends. Tell me what you think!

Also, 2 peppermint shrimp were put in the tank about a week ago and did some serious work, I think all of the aiptasia is gone! Also changed all of the filters on the RO/DI unit so all the water should be super clean, going to start making new salt water to get those water changes in.

Lastly, I have 2 photos of the sump setup. It really is awful to work with, as you'll see that being that its a 36" tank there is basically no room around it under the stand which is a bummer. There's a new skimmer ready to be installed to actually free up some space since the current skimmer is the remora which sites on the front of the other door (no photo of that). Any recommendations on how to make this any easier if possible?