6ft Acrylic Tank Restoration (Before & After Pics)
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Ok I have a dumb question, dont mean to hijack here, but ive never owned an acrylic tank...How much can a acrylic tank be sanded before it becomes too thin to fill? Im guessin your sanding to take acrylic off and get the scratches off, but like i said, how much is too much???
StongrayBob - To be honest I have no clue. I will say that Acrylic was very soft, it sanded very easily. With the minimal amount of sanding I did I'm not concerned. However if there were deep gouges and one used a power sander to get them completely flat I could see it thinning the Acrylic pretty quickly.
Thanks again all.
Thanks again all.
On my lunch break, here are a couple pics.
Bare bottom.
Pouring the sand in, gotta go back to work. More pics then.
Bare bottom.
Pouring the sand in, gotta go back to work. More pics then.
nice work looking forward to seeing it full of fish. finding a good deal sometimes means the investment is still there but in the form of labor to get it back to a usable place. it looks great
Thanks guys. 
And nah, back isn't to bad. I did it a little at a time.
Here are a couple more. Don't mind the empty food containers, they are there to seal up two small remaining gaps until I get a chance to trim all those panels to fit.
As of Noon-ish today with and without flash. Only a 15w light on the tank.
I poured the Lowes Quickrete Sand in last night about 8-9pm, I didn't rinse it at all I just poured it from the bag into a bucket to make it easier to pour in the tank. It clouded up something fierce last night, killing the Rosy feeder that was in it. As of noon today you can see it's mostly cleared up, not perfect yet but a vast improvement for only being 17 or so hours. I read many complaints on here of this sand that it was cloudy for days even after the sand was rinsed prior to putting it in. Either I got a really good bag or some of you need to step up the filter game. I went to the pool section first but Lowes didn't seem to have any filter sand so I went with the Quickrete. I thought it would be horrible so I didn't even bother with rinsing as I said, but the Wet/Dry cleared it right up.
Here is the pump (Quiet One, rated 700gph but likely doing about 500gph as is), some of the custom Zennzzo scrubbies and one of the heaters; a Stealth 250w. The other is a 300w inline Hydor on the output of the pump behind the tank. They are both set pretty high to see if they can heat the tank to the levels I want for the P Bass, I am not sure 550w is enough. They seem to always be on. I may have to add another 250w stealth and a heater controller that can handle 1000w just so they are always on together, I think with the extra one and the controller it would surely be enough. The total water volume of the system is around 150-160 gallons. I added Acrylic panels over all the holes to seal it up as best as possible since I ditched the hood after dropping it. I've got one more piece of Mopani soaking that I'm putting in tonight, I'll add more pics once it goes in. I am not sure what other stuff will go in, maybe some fake plants.
And nah, back isn't to bad. I did it a little at a time.
Here are a couple more. Don't mind the empty food containers, they are there to seal up two small remaining gaps until I get a chance to trim all those panels to fit.
As of Noon-ish today with and without flash. Only a 15w light on the tank.
I poured the Lowes Quickrete Sand in last night about 8-9pm, I didn't rinse it at all I just poured it from the bag into a bucket to make it easier to pour in the tank. It clouded up something fierce last night, killing the Rosy feeder that was in it. As of noon today you can see it's mostly cleared up, not perfect yet but a vast improvement for only being 17 or so hours. I read many complaints on here of this sand that it was cloudy for days even after the sand was rinsed prior to putting it in. Either I got a really good bag or some of you need to step up the filter game. I went to the pool section first but Lowes didn't seem to have any filter sand so I went with the Quickrete. I thought it would be horrible so I didn't even bother with rinsing as I said, but the Wet/Dry cleared it right up.
Here is the pump (Quiet One, rated 700gph but likely doing about 500gph as is), some of the custom Zennzzo scrubbies and one of the heaters; a Stealth 250w. The other is a 300w inline Hydor on the output of the pump behind the tank. They are both set pretty high to see if they can heat the tank to the levels I want for the P Bass, I am not sure 550w is enough. They seem to always be on. I may have to add another 250w stealth and a heater controller that can handle 1000w just so they are always on together, I think with the extra one and the controller it would surely be enough. The total water volume of the system is around 150-160 gallons. I added Acrylic panels over all the holes to seal it up as best as possible since I ditched the hood after dropping it. I've got one more piece of Mopani soaking that I'm putting in tonight, I'll add more pics once it goes in. I am not sure what other stuff will go in, maybe some fake plants.
Added one more piece of Mopani wood and two larger river rocks. Also put a sponge filter in the corner. A little cloudy from stirring things up when adding the new stuff.
With & without flash.
With & without flash.
