Destruction and Revision(leaks and leaks)

[Maverick]

Hello everyone,
I am aware some of you were familiar with my mudskipper paludarium. Unfortunately I had a small trickle coming out of the middle bottom of my 55gal, decide the time is no better since I had 3 days off.

After all the water, land portions, cave, sand, mangroves, rocks, everything was removed, I noticed a slight issue with the background 4ft section of glass pane and the bottom pane. The table that the aquarium was on ( USE A STAND FOLKS! or atleast use styrofoam and level!) actually started to bow in the middle, which caused the pressure of the water to separate not only the seal on the inside, but the bottom and back panes themselves. Right in the middle, of course. So realizing this after much research, I came to two conclusions:

1) Buy an expensive piece of glass to sandwich them together to form a new sealed bottom. (this option has many doubts, would I honestly be okay spending this money to lay a piece of glass over the piece that is already disconnected by the silicone?) I figured no.

2) Remove the trim of the 55 which was already haggard because of the distribution of water through the bottom/back pane issue. Take a razor blade and carefully remove the bottom pane of glass, starting at the leak.

I chose number 2. The trim on the bottom came off extremely easily (old tank and the deteration of such because of the water leak. I locate the leak (easily seen from naked eye via soft white cloudy silicone) following an attempt to insert a razor blade into the said leak. Sure enough, the razor blade goes clean through the space between two panes of glass, as if the silicone was butter. Quite sad, I can only imagine what WOULD OF happened if I did not catch this earlier.

With all of that being said, the bottom of the 55 was removed, in tact!

I simply could not save the tank so I decided to remove the silicone on the inside first, which unfortunately means taking the background off ( atleast at the corners). Concrete patching and painting/sealing would work.. however I believe it would be much easier to be optimistic and start back at the drawing board.

I have one more piece of background to remove, which is spray foam sprayed on glass unfortunately.. good luck with this one huh? After all this is said and done, well have some more pictures to look at atleast!

I'll keep ya posted.