OK, it’s just over a month since I replaced the glass on my 46 gallon, and here is where I’m at today:
1 month after starting the tank I cut the border to size
I didn’t trim the border until JUST before this picture was taken, and I also just put down a fresh layer of sand when this pic was taken. So up until now the border has been above the sand/Flourite levels by a good inch or so, which did a perfect job at keeping Flourite out of the sand and vice versa.
In this time, the Flourite which was originally sloped upward towards the back, has settled a bit which raised its level in the front slightly. So it’s a good thing that I waited a while to trim the border down, because if I had done it right from the beginning, it would already be a nightmare to keep the Flourite out of the sand.
Also, that 1 inch artificial dam collected a LOT of garbage in my foreground carpet plants and fouled them up pretty badly. I was mostly unaware of this because they were blocked from my view (by the border!). This was definitely a case of “out of sight out of mind” because I know that’s a common problem with carpet plants, I just couldn’t see them and didn’t think about that.
So now I’ve trimmed the border just above the line that the Flourite has settled to and added more sand to raise it to that level. My preference is for the sand to spill over into the Flourite but not vice versa, and plants to grow slightly into the sand, creating a completely natural looking effect. So far so good, more updates in time…
