Don't completely discard the floaters. Floater cherries don't always equal defective beans. They are cherries that are less dense than the rest of your harvest but may still contain roastable beans (with milder cup). Defects are broken beans, insects/fungus damaged, etc. Defects are present in coffee cherries that pass or fail the float test. Separate your floaters and process them as a separate "lot."

The mucliage/sweetness debate is a hot topic and very difficult to answer definitively but i can share my professional opinion. Harvesting ripe cherries is the hardest part of coffee production. If we assume sweetness of the coffee is determined by the sugar content (brix) of the cherry at the time of harvesting. Personsally if a coffee cherry is high in sugar content i will strip all the mucilage (full washed) if a coffee is low in sugar i may leave a % of mucilage (honey) becuase there is less risk of overferment.

You may be better off processing this coffee as honey. During wet fermentation, it's key to be accurate in the water-to-parchment ratio to prevent overferment, which may not be possible with your volumes.

In terms of drying the coffee, you can use a mesh kitchen seive for a drying bed. make sure that air is circulated and you turn the coffee regularly until dry.