75 gal - The Embiggening

After far too long doing tedious planting and absolutely ravaging the 20g, here is what it looks like before filling. I will still move a couple of Crypts, but wanted to leave enough for the existing fish in the 20 to get by for a few weeks. Anything left will be put in the refugium.

The right 1/3 side is going to be a shadier area with an acrylic surface baffle to keep floating plants there. Lots of stem plants were hacked up into shorter bits for propagation, so nothing has much height. There is a lot more going on than there appears at first sight. Some of the really tiny things will get reasonably tall. This is going to be a "hurry up and wait" project. I'll post a bit more about some things I encountered along the way as well.

Some pics after filling. There really are a lot of plants in there. Stem plants are mostly in the back.



You can see the back a little bit better in this more overhead shot.

And some floaters behind the surface baffle. I was debating removing all duckweed, but I do like it some. If it gets out of hand, I will just take out all floaters and clean a few of duckweed to put back in. It's a good plant, but it just gets everywhere if you aren't careful.

An issue came up with one of the sump baffles. I may have neglected one of the seams, or it might just be the poor silicone bond on acrylic. Silicone is used all the time for acrylic baffles in glass sumps, but you have to get both sides of the seam properly. In any case, I had one side partially come undone so am doing a repair and slight redesign.

I will expand the pump chamber by an inch, and remove the final baffle. I just realized it does nothing. The original intent was to have the gap to hold a piece of filter sponge to prevent crud getting in the pump area, but I can do that with just a 2" or so strip of acrylic. Also, I will lower the final weir by 1/2". There is enough room for all of the backwash when the pump is turned off, but I prefer a bit more insurance room.

In any case, I will remove the sump, do the repairs, and toss the heaters in the display with a power head for a couple of days while the glue cure. I'm going to use this: Silicone for acrylic sheets on the recommendation of a reef guy instead of regular aquarium silicone.

Ooh I like your idea for constraining the floaters. Think I'm going to copy that. I used to have a distinct light and dark side but have let that lapse into full coverage.