kpcollins31
New member
Last weekend, I bought a big sheet of 0.25" thick plexiglass to make baffles for my sump.
Lesson learned #1: Don't use a jigsaw even with a fine blade -- as soon as the blade would pass, the plexiglass would simply melt right back together leaving a rough, ugly seam. After destroying half of what I had bought :mad2:, I went back to the store to get advice. I wound up buying a special scoring blade which did the trick on the first baffle, but I was amazed at how quickly the blade dulled and became moderately useless.
Lesson learned #2: Pay the extra money for the store to cut the plexiglass to the size you need. Since my first attempt at dealing with plexiglass was fairly pathetic, some of the baffles turned out pretty poorly with uneven edges. I was able to clean them up a little with a rotary tool but they were still ugly
.
I siliconed the baffles in place in the 30G glass tank and they actually looked pretty good - skimmer section on the left with the traditional bubble trap, return in the center, and refugium on the right.
Now for my question...
It turns out that the refugium section has a leak and the water leaks out to the return area before the water can reach the top and spill over through the eggcrate I have siliconed in place. I drained it once and tried to resilicone, but I had the same problem much to my surprise (I used a good amount of silicone to avoid having the problem). Since I am pretty disgusted with the whole thing now, I am thinking about just dropping a bunch of sand in the refugium, some rubble rocks, and some chaeto and calling it a day. My thought is that sand will at the very least slow the leak and may potentially stop it in time once the sand gets lodged in whatever small gap exists. Worst case scenario, it keeps leaking but the refugium still serves its purpose.
Thoughts?
Kevin
Lesson learned #1: Don't use a jigsaw even with a fine blade -- as soon as the blade would pass, the plexiglass would simply melt right back together leaving a rough, ugly seam. After destroying half of what I had bought :mad2:, I went back to the store to get advice. I wound up buying a special scoring blade which did the trick on the first baffle, but I was amazed at how quickly the blade dulled and became moderately useless.
Lesson learned #2: Pay the extra money for the store to cut the plexiglass to the size you need. Since my first attempt at dealing with plexiglass was fairly pathetic, some of the baffles turned out pretty poorly with uneven edges. I was able to clean them up a little with a rotary tool but they were still ugly
.I siliconed the baffles in place in the 30G glass tank and they actually looked pretty good - skimmer section on the left with the traditional bubble trap, return in the center, and refugium on the right.
Now for my question...
It turns out that the refugium section has a leak and the water leaks out to the return area before the water can reach the top and spill over through the eggcrate I have siliconed in place. I drained it once and tried to resilicone, but I had the same problem much to my surprise (I used a good amount of silicone to avoid having the problem). Since I am pretty disgusted with the whole thing now, I am thinking about just dropping a bunch of sand in the refugium, some rubble rocks, and some chaeto and calling it a day. My thought is that sand will at the very least slow the leak and may potentially stop it in time once the sand gets lodged in whatever small gap exists. Worst case scenario, it keeps leaking but the refugium still serves its purpose.
Thoughts?
Kevin
However glass does take to silicone better....
. 
