glad to see you still have a pulse on the humor bud
while your
zipping out, pick up a bag of zip ties while your at it! You'll need em for the
diy building kit.
you can handle the fixes yourself, even though its easy to get it done for you, once you do it only once, you tend to sit back & say thats a snap!
that leak needs addressing, i'll put it into perspective, when i plumbed my last nano project i still had a small breach on the return. drinking & gluing might be the cause in hind site but the moral of the story was i let it go because it was like a drip a min and would block easy, anything that constitutes a trickle =

& should be sealed.
look forward to seeing your cabinetry. glad you thought about the weight ahead of time.
As for the covers, im surprised an american is asking to employ them..lol
most of you leave open top & contend with major evap. which is fine if you automate the process with auto-top off devices. if your still controlling
salinity manually i can see why the need for limiting evap. just keep in mind its sometimes a neutral gain, you can easily win in one area, but lose in another.
I use glass for everything cause its cheap, as long as you factor ventilation namely for gas exchange and the logical use of your tank bracing positions your laughing.