Hey guys,
I've got a question on the reseal of my 240g. It's a used tank in pretty good condition, my boss (owns a lfs) gave it to me so I somewhat trust my source. However, and this is a big however, it was sitting on the side of his house for some time. I'm unsure how long or if it was in direct sunlight (I don't believe it was since it was on the North side of the house.) There weren't any scratches and it actually looks to be in pretty good shape and the original silicone still looked in pretty good shape.
We did a reseal of the tank by scraping off the old silicone on the bottom and sides with a razor blade, cleaned it really well with rubbing alcohol, and put down a new fresh bead of GE Silicone I. The bead we did was pretty darn thick as well. Here's my concern; there has been some debate as to whether or not this is a solid reseal of the tank. My boss basically explained how the important sealing it actually on the inside of the glass where they connect and the inside stuff, while helpful, is not going to do much as far as holding it together. Every resealing I've ever done or been aware of has just been the method we have done, but this will be our first 240gallon. And even though the tank looks to be in pretty good shape actually, I want to treat it as though the silicone was done because it was sitting outside not temperature controlled so the fluctuations could mess with the elasticity of it.
If this was just in a basement or garage, I'd say screw it and take our chances; but this is in our living room, so I need to be extra careful and go over the top. We do a lot of DYI projects so I'd like to think we know what we're doing, but I really need your guys' second opinions and hear your experiences. Is there another way we could secure it as well? Doesn't have to be pretty.
Here's a photo I just took, it still needs a little more cleaning and finishing touches. I want to clean up the silicone a little bit in some spots. There is also a fairly wide center piece of glass attached at the top. We also built the stand ourselves, has 8 4x4 and a number of 2x4s we used douglas fur this time and added a side door (on left, kind of hard to see) so we could easily put in the 80g sump we just built. Still haven't picked our our door handles yet.
I've got a question on the reseal of my 240g. It's a used tank in pretty good condition, my boss (owns a lfs) gave it to me so I somewhat trust my source. However, and this is a big however, it was sitting on the side of his house for some time. I'm unsure how long or if it was in direct sunlight (I don't believe it was since it was on the North side of the house.) There weren't any scratches and it actually looks to be in pretty good shape and the original silicone still looked in pretty good shape.
We did a reseal of the tank by scraping off the old silicone on the bottom and sides with a razor blade, cleaned it really well with rubbing alcohol, and put down a new fresh bead of GE Silicone I. The bead we did was pretty darn thick as well. Here's my concern; there has been some debate as to whether or not this is a solid reseal of the tank. My boss basically explained how the important sealing it actually on the inside of the glass where they connect and the inside stuff, while helpful, is not going to do much as far as holding it together. Every resealing I've ever done or been aware of has just been the method we have done, but this will be our first 240gallon. And even though the tank looks to be in pretty good shape actually, I want to treat it as though the silicone was done because it was sitting outside not temperature controlled so the fluctuations could mess with the elasticity of it.
If this was just in a basement or garage, I'd say screw it and take our chances; but this is in our living room, so I need to be extra careful and go over the top. We do a lot of DYI projects so I'd like to think we know what we're doing, but I really need your guys' second opinions and hear your experiences. Is there another way we could secure it as well? Doesn't have to be pretty.
Here's a photo I just took, it still needs a little more cleaning and finishing touches. I want to clean up the silicone a little bit in some spots. There is also a fairly wide center piece of glass attached at the top. We also built the stand ourselves, has 8 4x4 and a number of 2x4s we used douglas fur this time and added a side door (on left, kind of hard to see) so we could easily put in the 80g sump we just built. Still haven't picked our our door handles yet.
