Hello everyone... Name's Kevin Glad to meet you all.

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K

kevinster_1

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 3, 2010
45
0
6
west covina
hey guys. new to the forum and already i need advice on a situation that just happened today...
i walked into by office and omg my 500 gallon marine tank leaked all over my place of work. i close my business today to tend to this problem. took all the water, rocks, sand and oh yeah the fishes out of the aquarium. vacuumed everything dry and found the leak.
Tank is 8x3.5x2.5 and it's leaking from the seam on the bottom of the 8' side. this is a sapphire glass tank so i'm not sure as to silicone it or just redo the whole tank...

please advise if you've had experience this or know of what to do. thank you.
 
Yep. Empty out the whole tank, clean off all the silicone and reseal it. Tanks sounds like a beauty.
 
what i ment was if i should just silicone or is the tank too big and that i should hire someone to tear done the glass and redo the tank...
 
You could try just fixing the silicone in the one spot. Worst case is that you woul dhave to redo the whole tank.
 
I would strip out all the silicone from inside the tank, and reseal the whole inside. Don't take apart the glass, and no need to hire someone else to do it (unless you want to). It's not that hard to reseal a tank, even a large one like that. If you're careful, tape off your seams, and go slow and steady, it will look like its brand new from the shop, and be just as waterproof as when you bought it.
 
any one also know if silicone is best effective when naturally dried/cured for cool air dried/cures? will start on the sealing today after work so any advice would be great. thanks...
 
i think I'd just run a pile of silicone over the leaky spot, its gonna be covered by substrate anyways. I fixed a 30 gallon that way that came with a spot-leak from the factory almost 15 years ago and its still going strong.

As far as drying, I've always let silicone naturally dry, but I don't have any wisdom against blowing cool air on it.
 
Pretty much all silicone sealants on the market are RTV or room teperature vulcanizing. The thicker they are applied the longer they take to set. You'll want to give it at least 24 hours to dry , if not longer.
 
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