have you looked into a gyre setup? basically it's just water circulating in a circular path. i haven't used one personally, but i've seen a few in action and they do a great job.

as for waves...i'm not a big fan of seeing the fish just pulse back and forth. again, personal preference, but i think it just doesn't look all that good.

another thing you have to think about (and i'm being paranoid) is the volume of water that will be pulsing back and forth, and what it could do on the structural stability of the tank/stand. i've seen some pretty crappy stands in my time (i never owned them thank goodness). there was one in particular that i remember. it was a stand for a 75 gallon tank that put together like a puzzle piece. but the kicker here was that it didn't use ANY screws/nails/glue/tape/whatever to hold it all together. when the tank wasn't on the stand, it just wobbled back and forth. very scary.

but doing some math...a gallon of saltwater weighs like 8 lbs. so, if you have that tank a rocking, you have some serious weight being thrown around. just too nerve racking for me.

but going with what ace said...a wave like action can certainly suspend the detritus. i would suggest that people change their flow patterns in their tanks every once in a while to get the detritus out of the rockwork and into the water column for filtering. even on a wave tank, detritus will find a way to settle somewhere.