A tank repair question....
- Thread starter fook
- Start date
If you post some pics of the tank, we might be able to give you additional ideas for making the repair.
I'll try to take some pics later. I made some calls today and I think I've decided to replace all of the glass. I'm not really sure what I want to replace it with though. I got prices on .5 inch tempered glass, .5 inch non-tempered (probably not a good choice), .5 in acrylic and .75 in acrylic. I'm a big fan over over-fixing things. I sure would think .75 in thickness should be pretty good. But I don't know what the advantage of acrylic is except for maybe it's lighter?
Ok...here is a pic of what I'm working with. It's just a cell phone pic so sorry about the quality. It has occured to me that if I'm going to replace all the glass then I could just break it out but after seeing what it costs...I'd like to save as much of it as possible. Maybe I can reuse it later for something else.
Use a snap off razor knife to cut a slot into the silcone, fish your wire into the slot, use needlenose pliers, hemostat, or a dentist hook probe to grab wire and work it around glass.
I actually did use a snap off razor knife. It will go into the silicone about a half inch or so. That angle iron is either 1.5 in. or 2 in. so that's the surface area of silicone to cut through. I'll keep trying though. I'll say one thing...there is no way that thing should have leaked any water. Any ideas on which glass to use when I rebuild it? A buddy of mine just told me I didn't need tempered glass but I don't know if he knows what he's talking about or not.
I'd replace only the panel that is broken and then use that as the front viewing pane. I wouldn't go tempered, just replace with the same thickness glass as was removed.
Try using a hacksaw blade to remove the silicone. It might be thin enough to get in between the glass and the angle iron frame.
If the tank won't be able to get down the basement, where are you going to put it?
Try using a hacksaw blade to remove the silicone. It might be thin enough to get in between the glass and the angle iron frame.
If the tank won't be able to get down the basement, where are you going to put it?
I don't even know why I'm wasting my time doing this if I'm going to replace all the glass anyway. My son might have come up with the best idea. He wanted to know why we didn't just weld our own frame and put new glass into it. That's a very good question. We could sell this one and build a nicer one with more ideal demensions. It would be a lot less work. Plus, I was going to replace the exterior of the stand too so it wouldn't be very hard for me to just build a new stand.
If you decide to build your own, you don't need a steel frame like that. The silicone is strong enough to hold it in place. Do some research on the DIY threads to get some ideas, and your glass thickness depends on the depth of water. 3/4" is good for up to 36" but I wouldn't push much past. Tempered is stronger but if it cracked it shatters= glass and water everywhere. Plate glass if cracks= slow leak water everywhere but more time to catch it instead of an explosion.
Tonight I've been kicking around the idea of building something like 6x2.5x4 which would be roughly 450g. It would be even more water and fit very easily into where I want to put it but I'm not sure what I think about 4 feet of depth. I'm thinking of a very low, solid stand that wouldn't house a sump. I could maybe put the sump in the stand of another tank I have which would sit right next to this one. This is just theoretical. I've never actually built a tank but I have done just about everything you can think of for building/remodeling houses and I'm quite a perfectionist about what I build/fix....so I think I can build a tank if I do my homework first. And I'm actually kind of excited by the challenge.
I did make some headway on cutting through all that silicone today but my son makes a good point. If we're going to do all this work...taking 2 steps back might actually be taking a leap forward.
I did make some headway on cutting through all that silicone today but my son makes a good point. If we're going to do all this work...taking 2 steps back might actually be taking a leap forward.
