Thanks guys! Had a slow weekend with some family related travels but made some headway...
Still some scraping and cleaning up to do but most of the bracing's been cleaned up. I'm still hesitant to climb inside or un-clamp the base as the seam there is well over 1" in some places and the silicone takes 7-14 days to cross link and cure proper. Can't wait to get all that tape out of there!
Meanwhile I've started unpacking some of my dry rock, you can see some under the stand. That one piece measures around 30" across:
I also got my hands on some more Seaflor special grade sand, so I have five 40lbs bags in total which should get me a 1" sandbed. I hope
At $50 a bag I've already started running out of beer money over here.