I have short arms and for me the height of the tank makes the biggest difference. I have a 150g right now that is 20" tall but previously had a 90g that was 24" tall. I could not stand the 90g because I just could not comfortably get into the tank to do stuff and it annoyed the crap out of me. My 150g now is much larger but being only 20" means I can easily reach in to do stuff (pick up fallen frags, clean up sand bed, scrape that algae that's near the sandbed, move rocks, target feed corals, etc).
My suggestion would be to just get a shallower tank but keep the 48" length.
Edit: Based on the equipment that you already have I would do a 48x18x20 (you can reuse your stand, probably?) or 48x20x20 or 48x20x18
Last edited by kien; 10-29-2012 at 08:06 PM.
|